Swansea City head to Griffin Park to play Brentford in the midst of their worst run of form this season.
Article by Ross Power – @rosspow10
Three defeats in seven days have seen Swansea drop to a season-low 14th in the table and under a little bit of pressure to get a result to ensure this blip does not develop into anything more concerning.
I certainly think against Derby it was evident a few players looked fatigued and this contributed to one of our worst performances of the season and I feel we will be better this weekend without a mid-week game.
A Swansea team is always difficult to predict but I think there will be changes to personnel and formation as Potter looks for a winning combination. We have lost every time we have utilised a back 3 this season so hopefully, we will go back to a 4 with Carter-Vickers dropping out.
In the midfield, I could see Potter going with Fulton, Grimes and Fer to shore things up and match the Brentford 3 with McKay and Celina in support of McBurnie.
Losing Daniel James is a blow as he has been our best player recently and Potter might have to push Celina out wide with Montero unlikely to start and his reluctance to use the likes of Asoro, Dhanda, Dyer, Routledge and Narsingh.
There has been some call for the likes of Routledge and Dyer to be included but for me I feel we should be persisting with the youth as bringing them in at this stage with so little football under the belt does not seem worthwhile.
Brentford started the season impressively and looked set for a promotion push before they were rocked by Dean Smiths departure and have recovered. They have lost 6 of the 8 games they have played since he left and this would normally be a good time to play them if we hadn’t been on a poor run ourselves.
Brentford play a 4-3-3 and like to try and play an attacking brand of football. They are not going to bully us off the pitch as others have done but they do carry a threat with Ollie Watkins and Neil Maupay who has 13 goals this season.
After 3 very difficult games, I fully expect Swansea to be better at Brentford. It will not be an easy game as Brentford will look at our form and fancy a result. My prediction is a 1-1 draw but a better performance from the Swans. As we are currently 8 points off the playoffs and 8 points from the bottom 3 these next few games could be key to deciding in which direction our season is going in.
Stay tuned for our stats head to head as two of the youngest teams in the Championship meet this weekend.
