Huddersfield Town midfielder Aaron Mooy says Swansea City were the ‘most defensively-minded team in Europe after they defended out a 0-0 draw on Saturday with ten men.
I don’t know how many teams he’s played in ‘Europe’ exactly to compare us with, or how many of those had to play with ten men for 80 minutes, but what exactly did he expect? We learnt a harsh lesson away at Brighton, and we didn’t want to hand another three points to another relegation rival, which we most certainly would have done had not been so defensive, and simply let them play through us to score and win the game.
Surely, Mooy must understand the circumstances here. We’ve been struggling all season, and whilst we’ve hit good form under Carvalhal, we still to pick up points and not let those teams around us gain any advantage.
We deserved, and received plenty of credit for our defensive performance, and Carvalhal did what he had to do with what he had at his disposal. We couldn’t have lost a better, and more in-form player after just 11 minutes than Jordan Ayew, so we weren’t really in a position to still try and attack without our main source of creativity and goals.
We were severely lacking pace in the game as a result, the likes of Ki, Clucas and Andre Ayew wasn’t the sort of link-up and right blend of qualities to counter-attack against a Huddersfield side at home who were able to get forward at a high tempo.
Huddersfield kept on coming, and it was just a barrage of attacks on our goal, but at times it felt as if they were happy enough shooting from anywhere, and it was mainly quantity over quality, who missed a big chance to get three points against a side with equal points as themselves.
Mooy said:
“We had everything, we tried everything to score, but it just wasn`t our day. We went close a few times.
“Once they got the man sent off, they just sat back. They were already defensive before the sending off and then the sending off made it even more difficult.
“A lot of the shots we had were from distance because they were so compact.
“It was a great opportunity for us, but the manager said to us that we tried everything, gave everything we had, stuck to what he said, but it just wasn`t our day.
“He said the last time we played against 10 men we lost 4-1 against Bournemouth earlier in the season, so this was much better. We couldn`t score, but he didn`t want any negativity about the game, he wanted us to be positive.”
Yes, a lot of the shots were from distance, which was why they only had 4 shots on target from their overall total of 30. Another 11 were blocked. And yes, we were compact, but we still had one player less than they did, and still couldn’t find a way through, not to mention they had 80 minutes to try and get a single goal.
