Same Sh*t Different Day For Swansea City

It`s getting like groundhog day now, Swansea City produce another awful performance that ends in a defeat, no goals and only one shot on target before Paul Clement tells us that “we can turn things around”.

Same sh*t, different day.

The home defeat against Brighton a fortnight ago was pretty terrible. This display at Burnley wasn`t quite as painful, mainly because it was away from home, but it just as hopeless.

It took us 95 minutes to register our first shot on target, and we once again looked like a side that had been put together at the last minute. There`s a severe lack of team cohesion. They`re not singing off the same hymn seat so to speak, players` passes aren`t matching their team-mates runs, while Fer in particular was an expert in making life difficult for himself and the team. He wasn`t the only one of course, but he was the worst. Under-hit passes, stray passes and not forgetting playing passes to players who were double-marked.

Within 20 minutes, Burnley had 5 shots on target. To put that into perspective, that more than what we`ve managed in the previous 180 minutes.

Burnley`s constant attacking pressure and our habits of making life difficult ourselves meant that it was a case of how many goals the hosts would score before the break. It was only two, but it could have been possibly four as the defence had to make some crucial blocks and clearances inside the 6-yard area.

Wilfried Bony came on in place of the anonymous Jordan Ayew and he contributed a lot more but despite us having around 70% possession in the second half, we could never do anything within in and around the box. Our lack attacking creativity really is staggering. We literally have no ideas what to do with the ball as we approach the final third, and inevitably we just resort to getting the ball out to full backs to put in pointless crosses that never ever meet the head of a team-mate.

Disappointingly, Abraham picked up a bad injury that forced him off on a stretcher. The service to him was dreadful once again, although Bony coming on did help that somewhat, as we finally had a striker on the pitch who would stick to a central, attacking position.

It`s 2 wins in 12, 8 defeats, but don`t worry, because once again, Paul Clement believes we can turn this around. I`d love to know when exactly this will happen, because as far as I can tell, we`re a million miles away from even remotely looking like we might win a Premier League game.

“We are not playing well – that`s clear,”

“And when we don`t play well, it`s hard to pick up results. The big teams can get results even when they don`t play well, but it`s very difficult for sides like us to do that.
“These players are capable of performing better than they are at the moment, and that`s what we want to happen as quickly as possible.

“Of course I am concerned – I would be stupid if I wasn`t.

“I am concerned about the level of performance, I am concerned about our position in the table and I am concerned about how many goals we have scored – or have not scored – this season.

“All these things we have to work on.

“But I have got no doubts about my ability and the ability of these players.

“Together, we have to work through difficult times. Better times are in the future if you have belief and you are positive.”

“We didn`t start too badly,”

“There were some positives for us in the start, but one problem we have at the moment is belief and confidence.

“When the goal went in, I think the confidence got sucked out of our players. We have really got to find a way to break this cycle we are in.

“It`s Bournemouth next week and we now have to focus on trying to get a performance and result against them.”

“The thinking was that while we have been doing okay defensively, our problems have been offensive,”

“We have scored seven goals in 12 games. That`s not enough.

“We wanted to try to keep our defensive stability but get more offensive players into the team to try to create, but unfortunately it didn`t work either way today.”

Clement can keep hanging on to the positives all he wants, but this same rhetoric is getting tedious now. We`re 12 games into the season, pretty much a third of the way through and we only have 8 points – a 24 point average for the season. Performances are getting worse and when we`re trying the same methods that clearly aren`t working, you have to wonder if Clement really does have the “ability” like he mentions to get us out of this mess.