Swansea show Napoli they are no pushovers in South Wales
What. A. Performance. How did we not score? Could you even pick a man of the match? Last night we witnessed a great night in the history of Swansea City, where we held Rafa Benitez's much-fancied Napoli side to a 0-0 draw at home. Much more than that though, it's a result which will instill confidence in the squad that we can go to Napoli and get a positive result, as well as reinforcing the belief that if we keep this up we'll quickly pull away from the relegation zone.
Where to start? There were heroes all over the pitch last night. Monk has the team looking organised again and we're playing with a much better balance, allowing us to retain possession both out wide and through the middle. At the back, Vorm had a solid game making one save of note from, I think, Marek Hamsik, and the defensive shield in front of him was absolutely outstanding.
Ash seems to be playing with a renewed Hulk gene since Monk's appointment, while Chico made a couple of excellent interceptions as well as looking solid and composed throughout. At full back Rangel & Davies both looked good supporting their wingers but crucially they look more a part of a solid defensive unit than we'd become used to - Davies especially. Yes he gets forward, but his first role is to defend.
In midfield, we're back to what we do best. Two defensive midfielders, wide wingers, and an attacking midfielder floating between those four supporting the striker, who plays with his back to goal. Boy is it working. Leon and Canas were superb in the middle - even if the Spaniard did gift possession a couple of times. Leon, on the other hand, wouldn't have been mistaken for someone who'd been plucked straight from Barcelona's first team as he paraded around the centre, tackling and tika-taka-ing his way through an epic ninety minutes. At one point he shielded the ball from a plethora of Napoli players before playing a ridiculous pass inside to a teammate - he's looking confident and that can only mean good things for Swansea City.
Such was the midfield domination last night that we enjoyed 69 or 70% possession, depending on what websites you believe. Epic. Leon Britton made 81 passes at 93.8% accuracy, Jose Canas 76 at 92.1% - that's what we like. Dyer and Routledge were excellent too, attacking their men time and time again and Dyer in particular enjoyed a splendid time of it until he seemed to pick up an innocuous injury in the second half - hopefully that's nothing too serious.
Dyer seemed to have the number of his full-back and had probably the best effort of the night early on, his curling shot across goal tipped away by Rafael. In the second half Routledge too produced a spectacular effort which Reina did spectacularly well to tip over for a corner - thinking about it that was probably the best effort of the night. There were plenty to choose from.
Pablo Hernandez once again looked excellent. He's reveling in the space created by a system which uses all the width of a pitch, and his passing is starting to really, really click. One in particular to Bony split the Napoli centre-backs and it was only the face of keeper Rafael (who seemed to get scared of Bony and went off at half time) which stopped the Ivorian from opening the scoring - though in truth Bony probably should have done better.
I love Bony as much as anyone, but it didn't really happen for him last night - apart from that chance most of the chances he was presented with definitely fell in the "half chance" category, and while his link play was on the whole good he had a pretty frustrating time of it. He did his usual trick of holding a central defender off with one arm though - that's becoming a trademark. Love it.
Overall that's as good as I've seen us play in a long, long time and if we keep that up we'll be nowhere near the relegation zone come the end of the season. It's a shame Bony had one of those nights, but he's a quality player and more often than not one of those will go in - if we play like that in Napoli (which I know is a tall order) the laws of probability state one of them will probably go in off his arse.
In terms of what this will do for the squad, it's absolutely massive. Since taking charge, Monk has had a derby game, an away game at Stoke, before putting out a change team away at Everton. This could be viewed as the first time Monk's first-team have been put out against real, real quality opposition and they showed that if they work hard and play to the strength's of the system Monk is putting in place then we can beat anyone. After all, we've shown it before and secured results against big teams, so why did it suddenly become the case that losing to top six teams was a foregone conclusion? Words to this effect from Laudrup were rumoured to be one of the things which the board disagreed with, and it's pleasing to see Monk set the team out to have a real go at Napoli. Fear no-one. Have faith in the system.
With the vast majority of the players who featured last night having enjoyed eight days off thanks to Monk's rotation, it's likely we'll see most of the players feature again on Sunday at Liverpool, though how many are retained is an intriguing question given we've then got to travel to Napoli next week. Is it worth resting players against Liverpool? It's a brave man who goes to Anfield and fields a "weakened" team, and no doubt Monk would argue, as would any manager, that rotation doesn't weaken a team but the team that was on display last night is clearly the Swansea first team, with perhaps De Guzman, Shelvey & Michu all capable of operating in the role currently occupied by Pablo Hernandez. We could well see one of Jono or Jonjo (ha) come in for Pablo as he was withdrawn amidst talk of a slight strain, but that would be a shame given Pablo's performances of late.
On to Liverpool then, with an air of confidence derived from a thorough hammering of Napoli which only lacked goals. Monk has already experienced defeat to one ex-boss in Martinez last weekend, and he won't want to be on the end of a defeat from another this Sunday - expect a big performance. Monk will have the team fired up to put one over our old boss, and fingers crossed, we could be in for another classic.