Swansea City are back in Championship action with a visit to Deepdale to take on Preston North End.
Match Preview by Ross Power – @rosspow10
After two impressive away performances in league and cup to start 2019 the Swans will fancy their chances of making it 3 consecutive wins against an out of form Preston.
If the last two games are anything to go by it looks as if Graham Potter is now leaning towards settling on his strongest 11 and limiting the amount of game to game changes that have sometimes hampered Swansea this season.
Expected Line-Up & Team News
I fully expect Swansea to line up with their favoured 4-2-3-1 formation with Oli McBurnie for Courtney Baker-Richardson perhaps the only change from the win at Aston Villa.
There is a case for bringing Daniel James back but after Dyer and Routledge both had good games at Villa Park it would not make sense to drop either.
With the sickness bug that also affected the squad now passing it will great to see the likes of Wilfried Bony and Jefferson Montero back as options off the bench.
With Tom Carroll due back shortly the Swans are close to having a fully fit squad with the exception of the long term Martin Olsson and this will stand us in good stead in a key period of the season.
Preston’s recent form
Preston come into the game in a very different situation. For their last league game they only had 12 fit senior players and this coincided with a run of poor form with 4 defeats in their last 5 league games.
Preston have had a very up and down season to date with runs of poor form followed by some decent results and they currently sit in 17th.
They started the season very poorly and were winless in their first 6 games including a 1-0 defeat at the Liberty Stadium in a game I thought Preston played well in; they certainly did not look like a team destined to struggle.
Their form did improve in September and October – sufficient enough to pull away from the bottom 3 before a further poor run.
Preston will welcome 4 new signings into the squad for this game including prolific league 2 goal scorer Jayden Stockley and have further senior players back fit. They will still be missing winger Callum Robinson who was impressive in the game earlier in the season and a player who I feel would really suit Swansea.
Prediction
I am really hopeful Swansea can carry on where they left off against Villa in this game.
Preston concede a lot of goals and having scored 7 goals in the last two games there are pointers towards Swansea becoming more clinical. With our away form being good and Preston not at their best I am going for a 2-0 away win and more progress.
