Andrew McGlashan looks at Bony's impact in defence as well as in front of goal
Daddy Cool has moved to Man City and he will certainly need replacing – at both ends of the pitch. The time has finally come. Arguably the best player to play for our club has moved on to what he hopes will be bigger and better things. Certainly his monthly payslip will be.
I don’t think there is a single Swans fan who doesn’t wish Wilf the best and thanks him for his efforts over the past 18 months. We knew the day would come when a Champions League club came sniffing. However, it wasn’t expected to be Man City, it wasn’t supposed to be in January and it still doesn’t stop us being absolutely gutted. It’s exactly the same feeling as when Trundle left for me.
Thankfully the whole saga has been stretched over a week so that we can all slowly come to terms with the grief before it was officially announced. Had this happened on the last day of the transfer window then I think we would have all been rocked and who knows what impact that would have had on the rest of our season. Instead, Wilf leaves on good terms and we have £28 million pounds to spend - although I think its safe to say that the majority of this won’t be spent until the summer. A silver lining to this is that yet again it's another piece of incredible business by Huw and the boys.
Many will have seen the video the highlight reel published by the club of Wilf’s 34 goals in all competitions. It is a very satisfying watch although it does pull at the heart strings knowing he won’t be wearing that number 10 shirt any more. His goals, hold up play (the below clip from the game against Cardiff is my favourite example) and moments of pure skill (that assist for DeGuzman against Norwich in particular) will all be talked about for years to come. He has obtained legendary status and rightfully so.
It is obvious that we will miss all these great things about Bony and Gomis now has very big shoes to fill (and probably shorts given the size of Bony’s thighs!). However, I think there is another side of Bony’s game which will be missed just as much. A side that doesn’t get talked about much given the number of goals he scores and centre backs he bosses around the pitch. This is his heading ability whilst we defend set pieces.
It struck me whilst we played West Ham at Upton Park earlier this season just how incredible his leap is. He was towering above players who had a good 3 or 4 inches on him. It was ridiculous. The salmon of Capistrano have nothing on him! I’ve watched in our last few matches, whilst we defend set pieces, that Bony sits in a little zone in the penalty box, not marking anyone, with the sole purpose of attacking the ball. It’s a very clever ploy as it means he isn’t responsible for following a man (something strikers are not good at) but rather he can just use his freakish attributes to header the ball away to safety.
This led me to researching just how many clearances Bony has made this season alone. Unsurprisingly to me I discovered he is second in the Premier League amongst strikers with 32 clearances. That’s almost 1.5 times a game he’s making a defensive header in our box which is significant. The only striker in the Premier League with more is Connor Wickham (which says a lot about Sunderland this season).
To compare this to other strikers in the Premier League, Crouch, Rooney and Ulloa are next with 25 clearances and Chamakh and Austin have 24. In fact, Bony has made more clearances than many defenders in the league, including Clint Hill and Danny Simpson. All in all its a huge defensive contribution from a striker and one that will need to be filled for the remainder of the season when defending set pieces.
The obvious solution would be for Gomis to step into the same role. From what I’ve seen so far I wouldn’t say he is as good in the air as Bony, although I think he should be able to do a job and we managed to defend all of our set pieces against West Ham, which is a pretty impressive achievement (even more so when 4 out of our 5 man midfield were 5’8 or under) given our track record. Of course if recent reports are to believed, Gomis may be off in January and we’ll need someone else but I can’t see Huw signing off on such a sale.
All in all Bony’s exit means the remainder of the season will be very interesting to see. We are safe from relegation with 30 points already on the board and we are still in the FA Cup with a manageable fourth round tie to come. This is job done really in respect of our minimum targets for the season.
Now it just remains to be seen whether our performance levels take a dip. In terms of replacing Bony, I’d like to think that in true Swansea style it’ll very much a case of "next man up". Just like Scotland followed Trundle and Bony followed Michu.
The only difference is that none of these players were anywhere near as good defensively as Bony, but hopefully that won’t matter. Monk et al now have a job to make sure we don’t miss Wilf in front of our own goal as well as the opposition’s.
In the meantime, thanks for everything Wilf. You’re welcome down Wind Street any day.
Thanks to Andrew for his latest contribution, you can follow him on Twitter @ajmcglashan. This is a point I've spoken about many times, and it's a more than valid one. We'll definitely have to adjust how we defend at set pieces - who will replace Wilf at the near post when a cross is set to come in?