Monk returns fire after Cardiff boss Solskjaer criticised De Guzman's reaction to Craig Bellamy elbowing him in the head
In what is quite clearly an attempt to divert attention from a poor run of results, we've had new Cardiff boss Ole Gunnar Solskjaer come out in the press criticising Jonathan De Guzman.
"If that was me going down like that, I think my father would have told me off."
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer
Grow up, is it? Whether or not Bellamy meant it (he did), there's contact and De Guzman had a right to go down. I don't like players going down easily, but arguing he was playacting there seems to me to be the act of a manager desperately clutching at straws, because he knows he's got a real fight on his hands to avoid relegation. Anything he can do to deflect fans thoughts away from poor performances on the field must surely be welcome, as one win and a draw in his first six league games is hardly the kind of form which will keep them up. Ok, they've played United and City in that run, but performances have been poor enough to warrant both concern in Canton and mirth in Mumbles.
It seemed the Swans were going to let his little swipe slide, but Garry Monk doesn't back down - especially when it's one of his own being criticised. One of the things he's clearly keen to do is get the squad back feeling like a close-knit unit - we've always derived great success from an "us and them" attitude and to be honest I'm glad to see Monk hitting back. De Guzman did nothing wrong, and the Swansea boss is right to stand up for his man.
"Ole should look at his own players before he starts looking at mine. I saw Ole answering the question saying that my man Jon de Guzman made a meal of it. When you receive an elbow in the back of the head and you just go down normal, I don't think that's an over-reaction.
"In the 35th minute in a corner for them [Cardiff] one of my players Wayne Routledge gets head butted and punched in the face by Kim [Bo-Kjung]. If anything I'd be more concerned about something like that than saying that one of my players is play-acting.
"If you look at Wayne when he gets head-butted and punched in the face he stays on his feet and doesn't make a meal ofit." Garry Monk
Well in Garry! I can't say I noticed that incident during the match, but you can bet your house that he wouldn't bring it up if it didn't happen. Cardiff "have been asked to comment" on the incident, though by who the BBC haven't informed us.
Solskjaer having a pop just says to me he's already feeling the pressure of being in charge of the madhouse up the M4. It must seem a long time since he announced his aim was to finish above the Swans...
On one final note, let's have a look at Ole "Always Stays On His Feet" Gunnar Solskjaer NOT making a meal of this challenge by Sol Campbell.
Midfielder suffered nasty clash of heads during Dutch training session, but hopes to return to full training on Wednesday
Dirk Kuyt. I'm now preeeetty sure he was in The Goonies.
As anyone who has just watched that will attest, that must have sucked. Of all the players to run into, he managed to find the face of veritable iron man Dirk Kuyt who also paid the price, suffering a black eye comparable to that a boxer would expect to finish a particularly brutal bout with. I think if anything De Guzman appeared to get slightly lucky in that, due to him being a few inches shorter than Kuyt he, as he's stated, was knocked clean out and the first thing he knew about it was waking up on the floor with a medic looking over him.
Hopefully he can come back into the squad this week and look to get involved at White Hart Lane. With Spurs rumoured to be close to signing another quality player in Willian, it seems we're going to be in for a tough time of it, and anything other than a top notch performance will result in an outcome similar to Saturday's.
First up though are Petrolul Ploiesti this Thursday, and that will come too soon for De Guzman. Instead, the Swans will choose from Leon Britton, Jose Canas, Ki S-Y, Jonjo Shelvey and Michu to fill their midfield, and it's hard to see us struggling to put together a competitive midfield with those players at our disposal. It really is remarkable how much strength in depth we now have at central midfield, and it could be that Laudrup shuffles his pack on Thursday given both the upcoming game at Spurs and the heavy defeat at the weekend.
Hopefully this Thursday's game pans out more like the Malmo game than the United one...
"All I remember is running through a passing drill and all of a sudden I’m waking up about a minute later laid out on the deck and the doctor is looking over me. It was a nasty clash, but it was just an unfortunate accident.
"I've had the stitches out today and trained with the group too, and hopefully I'll be involved in full training on Wednesday. If that happens then it will help my case for selection for Sunday's game against Tottenham
"It would be great to be involved because obviously I missed last weekend's match with Manchester United, but we'll wait and see how it goes." Jonathan De Guzman
News has just broken that Jonathan De Guzman will indeed return for next season, which won't be a surprise to many given how he's spoken about the Swans in recent weeks. The Canadian-born Dutchman clearly enjoyed himself last year, and there've been numerous quotes where he's stated he was open to spending another season here.
Last week JDG had this to say:
“I had a great year at Swansea,The people around the club and the fans treated me well. It was not just the results we had; it was more about showing we can also compete with the big teams. We played better against the bigger teams.
“We played well in a lot of games. We played good football and it’s refreshing playing in a team that has a good football mind. I’m very satisfied with what happened. We did very well, we were very creative.
“We really put Swansea on the map.” Jonathan De Guzman
He's also put a video online of his "review of 2012/13" - worth a watch;
I for one am happy to see him back for another season as he clearly fits into the way the team plays very well. I have previously stated that his performances dipped in the second half of the season, but that could also be said of a few other players and it's possibly harsh to criticise given how well the team did last year.
Huw Jenkins hinted that if things go well we may well end up signing him permanently:
“Everyone is happy the loan is continuing, then Jonathan will review his long-term future next summer.’" Huw Jenkins
A big welcome back to Jonathan, and hopefully this is just the latest in a series of announcements which sees top players committing to playing their football in SA1 next year. With the signatures of Jordi Amat & Jose Canas confirmed, and Alejandro Pozuelo & Wilfried Bony both rumoured to be close to signing, there could well be a lot more good news to report on in the next few days.
With the Swans rumoured to have agreed a deal for Real Betis midfielder Jose Canas, it appears there will be increased competition in the Swansea midfield next year, and with De Guzman yet to sign permanently, I thought it would be interesting to have a look at some statistics to see what kind of effect Ki & JDG have had on the team.
Ki Sung-Yueng
It would be easy to just go with the obvious and leave it there. Ki still tops the Premier League charts in terms of passing accuracy, while JDG is the Swans' second top scorer, so you'd be forgiven for thinking that Ki is obviously a more defensive player while JDG has excelled in attack, and while both are partially true I feel there's more going on than meets the eye.
Of late, I've felt De Guzman's performances haven't been up to the standard he set earlier in the season, and some fans are questioning his work-rate - saying that he doesn't seem to harry the opposition as much as he should. While I can't say I feel that's true, I do think that De Guzman drifts around the field too much when playing alongside Leon (or whoever else) in a deeper midfield role, and that in turn creates problems in terms of defensive organisation.
When you play football like the Swans do, being heavily reliant on team shape to maintain a solid defensive footing, it's imperative that the defensive midfielders hold their position; Leon seemed to be dragged around the field an awful lot against Southampton and given how out of character it appeared it must have been to do with those around him distorting the team shape. When Michu plays attacking midfield as opposed to centre-forward I feel this exacerbates the problem, but I do feel that when Ki plays alongside Leon it gives the Swans a lot more balance.
At present, I still prefer a midfield trio of Leon, Ki, and JDG in front of them, but if there was only one "defensive" midfield berth to play for, should it go to Ki or De Guzman? With all stats only relating to PL games, first up let's look at ball retention. Ki has completed 92.5% of his passes (1438/1554 - 6th in Europe in terms of passing accuracy) against De Guzman's 88.4% (1527/1727) and while JDG has played more passes in total he's also started nine more games than his Korean counterpart. Ki averages 55.5 passes completed a game to De Guzman's 54.4, so not much to choose from there, but it would seem that, given the smaller amount of starts enjoyed by the Korean, he's a little busier in terms of moving the ball around the field.
Jonathan De Guzman
De Guzman has clearly created more in attack, with six assists to Ki's two, and they average 1.6 and 1 "key pass(es)" [excuse the pun] respectively - in fairness to Ki though he's consistently been employed in a more defensive role than he'd previously been used to and I feel his natural game would see him play further forward which would in turn see him create more opportunities (as well as finally getting his first goal). A demonstration of this was when well placed (again) against Southampton, Ki opted to pass instead of shoot - as anyone who's watched Youtube videos of him can testify, the guy likes to shoot and has scored lots of goals, and I think his reluctance to shoot is due to the distinct awareness that to comply with his role in the team, he's to retain possession in situations whereby otherwise he would have had a pop.
Ki averages 5.9 successful long balls per game against JDG's 3.8, further drilling home the accuracy with which the Korean dispatches the ball. I love watching Ki play as everything seems to be done with an exaggerated movement in an effort to connect perfectly, and I think sometimes it's easy to mistake it for the Korean being ponderous - the stats show this isn't the case as he's only dispossessed 0.9 times per game (against De Guzman's 1.2) and attempts the same amount of dribbles as the man on loan from Villareal (0.4). Interestingly, the Dutchman wins the ball back twice as often, with 0.9 "turnovers" per game (as opposed to Ki's 0.4), but they attempt an almost identical amount of shots (Ki with 1.4, JDG with 1.5).
Ki manages over twice as many clearances per game (1.3 to 0.6), while they both complete the same amount of interceptions (1.2) and almost the same amount of tackles (Ki with 1.2 & JDG with 1.3). I think this is starting to show that some fans view that JDG is (marginally) more combative is possibly far from the mark, as it seems in terms of defensive contribution Ki is just as effective. It obviously can't be ignored that with 5 goals and 6 assists, De Guzman has been massively more potent in attack when compared with Ki's 0 goals and 2 assists, but I do feel that if Ki had enjoyed a more attacking role throughout the season the figures would be a lot more even. As mentioned above, I get the distinct impression that Ki's natural game is more attacking than we're currently seeing, and I'm hoping the arrival of Canas remedies this, as I'd love to see him start banging them in from 30 yards.
Should we sign De Guzman permanently? Reports had previously put the price at £8million, but recently it seems that's been revised and £5million would be nearer the mark. Originally I thought that still sounded a lot, given that we're likely to have paid his wages all year and, possibly, a fee to take him on loan in the first place, but after speaking with a friend I came to the conclusion that if there was a midfielder of JDG's quality at a Premier League club who were getting relegated, and he'd scored 5 goals and got 6 assists that season, I'd be saying we should sign him up, especially if the asking price is only £5million. For a central midfielder who can clearly cut it in the Premier League, and is likely to kick on again next season, that seems a bit of a bargain, and with plenty of games to go round next year both Ki and JDG could enjoy lots of playing time in the CAM role - whether that happens though is another thing.
For now, I'd like to see Leon and Ki deep, with JDG ahead of them, but if we sign Canas (and he's as good as we hope) then at present I'd still like to see Ki given a run in the team in a creative attacking role. Sure, it'll take a while for him to get out of the "pass, pass, pass" train of thought but I think ultimately it'll be worth it. Check out the video above for a demonstration of what I mean. In a cop out similar to the one at the end of the Neil Taylor v Ben Davies comparison, I'm going to say that realistically they are both important members of the Swansea squad who we can expect to improve next year, and I'd love to see De Guzman sign permanently. For £5million, anyway...
Firstly, let's go with some actual news shall we? Skysports are reporting that according to Michael Laudrup, Jonathan De Guzman wants to put pen to paper on a permanent deal which would keep him in SA1 beyond his current loan, which expires at the end of the season. Huw had mentioned before that the Swans were likely to look at making his deal permanent, but this latest quote seems to confirm that a bid will be made in the summer (or maybe even that a deal is already being discussed):
Michael Laudrup: "It's always difficult to say what's going to happen. A lot of clubs are thinking about the end of the season; promotion, relegation etc so they have a lot of important things to think about. Jonathan is playing very well and he's scoring goals. But he is happy here and I know he wants to stay here."
That quote, to me, indicates that the Swans may have already made an approach, but have been told to come back in the summer, which when you consider his parent club Villareal are chasing promotion back to La Liga, isn't that surprising. It's doubtful they'll want to agree anything before the transfer window opens as De Guzman has gone from strength to strength this season, and his good form will not have gone unnoticed by "El Submarino Amarilla" (unbelievably, Villareal's nickname is 'the Yellow Submarine').
When pressed on the upcoming fixture against WBA, Laudrup was quick to praise our next opponents. He's expecting a slight clash of styles, pointing out that WBA have, under Steve Clarke, developed into an effective counter-attacking unit, capable of inflicting damage on any team they come up against. Laudrup also cast one eye back to the fixture played out in South Wales earlier in the season, which, as mentioned in my last blog, contained possibly the most impressive fourty-five minutes of football seen by Swans fans this season.
"It is a game between two of the surprise packages of the season; both teams are seven points clear of tenth place, and that is really positive. They [West Brom] have done brilliantly this season, especially at home and they have a lot of talent and speed, in particular with Lukaku.
"We always like to have the ball but they are very good on the counter attack so we have to be careful, but we have to go there and play the way we always do and look to get a positive result. We were fantastic in that first half [in the reverse fixture at the Liberty Stadium], played some fantastic football with one and two touch movements and scored three good goals."
The Swansea Way goes showbiz!
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I will tonight be attending the South Wales Evening Post Pride Awards. This is an awards ceremony dedicated to celebrating unsung local heroes, who have gone above and beyond in their efforts within their respective fields. I will be mixing with dignitaries, celebrities, and hair-salon owners alike as the creme-de-la-creme of the SA postcode area descent on the Brangwyn Hall in this celebration of local people. The reason I'll be in attendance is my darling mother has been nominated, and shortlisted for, the award of "Best Teacher/Mentor", so I'll be suited and booted, and hoping to snag five minutes with Mr Laudrup, who is on the panel of judges this year. Paul Potts will be in attendance too, and he followed me on Twitter earlier so hopefully I'll be able to have a chinwag with him too. Wish me luck, as I think this will be the best opportunity I'll have to bag myself a couple of words (and some photos!) from someone SCFC related for a good while yet.
With that, it's 4:10pm, I've got to be there by 6:45pm and I need to shower. Better get moving really! Until next time...
