If ever there was a game of two halves...
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| Swansea. Moody sky. |
Only a few weeks ago we were playing a fixture on a quintessential cold, windy Wednesday night in Stoke, and our matchup against Crystal Palace turned into a soggy Sunday afternoon in Swansea, where the vast majority of supporters were thoroughly drenched by the time the referee blew his whistle to start the game. Traditional Welsh weather aside, Monk named essentially a first-choice team (recalling Dyer, Leon & Davies) and we set about out-passing and out-thinking Crystal Palace in one of the most complete first-half dominations I've ever seen. Stoke seemed happy to afford us the ball and it seemed they were going to pay for their generosity.
Early signs were good - Pablo played a neat triangle with Dyer releasing the winger but he was flagged offside, before the Spaniard struck a left-footed effort just past the far post. Sadly, that was his last involvement and I can only hope that he's not been struck with yet another injury. Fingers crossed. Monk replaced him with Canas, and for me the first half of football we saw today perfectly demonstrated what I've been saying for so long about two defensive midfielders being the key to success for Swansea City.
De Guzman is rapidly improving in a holding role, but once he was moved to attacking midfield (after Canas' introduction) and he had a solid base behind him to work off we improved massively. Before we had two defensive midfielders on the field we were retaining possession and looking the better team, but lacked penetration. Once Canas was on, however, the shape of the team improved and we started to create. There's a saying about having to know the rules before you can break them, and I think by having that much more of a solid shape to the team it then allows your creative players to interchange and drift across the field in the final third. The base is crucial though.
Back to the game itself and the presence of De Guzman alongside Bony was causing havoc in the Palace backline. A lovely team move saw the Dutchman open the scoring, latching onto a Leon Britton pass after god knows how many passes and a Bony flick before guiding the ball past Julian Speroni, and it wasn't long until he went close again - almost connecting with a great ball over the top but sadly just failing to get anything on it. Before half-time came we also saw Bony test Speroni with a low first time shot, and he again produced another save, though this one was a truly excellent effort. Low and to his right he got down well to stop the Ivorian doubling the Swans' tally, and it proved a crucial moment in the game given how the second half panned out.
Tom Ince hadn't enjoyed the first half at all, having a mare and having to endure loud chants of "Daddy's boy, daddy's boy, daddy's boy!" from the home fans (who clearly didn't appreciate his Tour De Bigger Contract), and he was subbed at half time. I didn't find out until Match Of The Day that his father Paul was in the stands - how he reacted to the chants we can't say but he can't have argued with Pulis' decision, though I was surprised to see a half-time sub given he'd already had to bring on Cameron Jerome for Marouane Chamakh, who'd picked up an injury.
So, Ince came off for Glenn Murray and boy did it change the game! Gone was the complete domination of the first half (where we enjoyed eighty-two percent of the possession - eighty-two percent!!!) and instead we had to deal with Palace pressing us high up the field and getting in our faces - something they simply hadn't been doing in the first half. Garry Monk said after the match that it was simply a case of fourty-five minutes too much football, and we had played three games in ten days, so I can understand if it was simply fatigue catching up with us. It is hard though to not be disappointed after a first-half performance which saw us completely outplay our opponents, though to focus on what we weren't doing would be a disservice to Crystal Palace as they thoroughly fought their way back into the match.
I've talked about Palace and Pulis quite a bit in the last few weeks on here and on both The Jackcast & the EPL Roundtable podcasts, and I've been saying how Palace have impressed me by playing a bit of football to go with the direct stuff Pulis likes. Well, I'd like to retract those comments if I may. Palace did excellently in the second half - they stopped us playing out from the back and they harried us into mistakes, but their only outlet was the big hoof downfield. Sadly, we seemed suddenly susceptible to it in the second half (Chico seemed to have very little joy in the air in particular) and under a concerted aerial bombardment we eventually wilted.
Crystal Palace's goal then. Long ball hoofed downfield, Vorm comes for it, decides he doesn't want it, and Glenn Murray gets there first. There's a big open goal so Chico takes one for the team and wrestles his man to the ground just outside the area, but that doesn't stop Mike Dean (about 50 yards away keeping up with play excellently) from being able to decide that it was indeed in the box, and that Chico should be sent off. The linesman didn't flag, and he was a lot closer Mike - personally though I'd say it was a free-kick and a red card. Either way, Murray got up to put the penalty into Vorm's top right corner and level the scores, and it was hard not to feel glad for him given how long he's had to watch from the sidelines as he recovered from a serious injury. Hard, but not impossible.
What was Vorm doing? Why didn't he just cream it out of the stadium? Who knows. Whatever the reason, we had a torrid ten minutes (the goal came in the 82nd minute) where we had no Ash (subbed reportedly due to illness) and Wilfried Bony (reported injury?) had long since departed for Leroy Lita. Previously a forgotten man at the Liberty, it's the second time Lita has featured under Monk but to be honest I thought he was very, very poor. Bony offers a lot defending set pieces, and the combined loss of him & Ash, plus Chico's sending off, means that managing to hold on for a point turned into a very good result indeed. We could have easily lost that game in the end, but you have to take positives from every performance and I'm sure that's what Garry Monk is doing.
We've now got the best part of two weeks until we play next, and I bet the boys are absolutely drooling at the prospect of a week which doesn't involve two competitive fixtures. They've earned a bit of a rest, and anyone who's not away on international duty will undoubtedly appreciate the prolonged rest period. This is the first chance Monk & his team will have had to actually take stock and plan training sessions, plus god knows what else, and I'm sure the longer he has to work with the squad the more positive results we'll see.
So, very much a Swansea team vs a Pulis team, and after a lot of sparring it ended 1-1. Was it two points dropped, or a hard-earned point we were lucky to hold onto? Was it both? Can it be both? Who cares, it's in the past now and all eyes go to West Brom. Another six-pointer, and another chance for us to pull away from the relegation zone. Bring it on.