Gomis' first Swansea goal enough to see off the Millers
This 2014/15 lark is going pretty well eh? Wins over Manchester United and Burnley were tonight followed up by another victory for the Swans in a match where - as against Burnley - we won without really performing to our best for ninety minutes. That's not to say we didn't play well tonight, and I thought we were definitely worth the victory, but the obvious encouraging factor is that there's still obviously lots of room to improve.
We lined up with a very, very youthful central midfield of Josh Sheehan, Jay Fulton & Tom Carroll, while Jazz came in at left-back, with the defence reading Bartley, Fernandez & Tiendalli to the right of him. On the wings we had Montero & Dyer, while Gomis & Tremmel completed the side. It meant Monk made ten changes to the side which had beaten Burnley, so I'm sure everyone else shared my curiosity to see how we'd perform with such a different looking lineup.
Early signs were...well I wouldn't know because I missed the first fifteen minutes getting into the ground (I'll do a separate blog about the delays in entry to the stadium later), but when I did get in we were obviously in the driving seat. We were finding our wingers regularly, and one of the first players who impressed me was Jazz, who was solid in the tackle (as is to be expected from him) but also always offered himself in attack. I also stumbled upon something I can't believe I hadn't noticed before - he was playing behind Montero which makes them the "Jazz & Jeff" partnership. All a bit Fresh Prince, but most definitely awesome.
Gomis looked very tidy, and I hadn't been in my seat that long when he opened the scoring on twenty two minutes. Picking up a pass from the right by Dyer, he let it roll across his body, took one touch and buried a left-footed finish into the bottom right corner of the Rotherham net. That was us in front, and to be honest we never really looked like losing our lead. There were a couple of hairy moments towards the end but generally a big Kyle Bartley sliding tackle came to the rescue. Not great we put ourselves in those positions, but at least we dealt with it.
Looking at my scribbled notes from the match, something curious was at one point Jeff passed Fernandez a note, which he read before tucking it into his sock. Get us with the tactics! If Freddy (I've decided I'm going to call him that because it's easier than Federico) isn't fluent in English it's possibly a way to get tactical instructions across, so keep your eyes out for that.
Another note I made is that we should have tried to get the young midfielders on the ball more. In the first half this wasn't so much of an issue but once Fulton had gone off at half time for Shelvey I thought it got a little more stretched. Jonjo was guilty of trying to force the issue, as was the case against Burnley, and when he calmed things down later on in the match the effect was obvious. Whether this was because of Sigurdsson's introduction on the hour mark we can't say, but in the closing stages of the match we definitely took more and more of a stranglehold on the game - much to Rotherham boss Steve Evans' chagrin. He could be seen growing more and more frustrated as the game went on, but he can't really have had any complaints about the final result.
So, three wins from three this season and with WBA to come at home this weekend we could realistically make it four from four. How many of tonight's team will be retained for the weekend is doubtful, but players like Dyer, Montero, Fernandez & Gomis did their chances no harm whatsoever. Jazz also gave a timely reminder of his qualities, and I do hope he can force his way into the team at some point.
An encouraging night for the Swans, and as I've said, there's plenty of room for improvement. Hopefully we'll see that starting Saturday. That being said, if we keep picking wins up at this rate I'll probably stop caring how we play...