After their surprise win over Bournemouth in the Vitality Stadium, Sunderland are no more the only worse team in the Premier league this season. They have been joined by Swansea City, who are level on points with the Black Cats. Unlike Sunderland, Bob Bradley’s men had a pretty difficult fixture against Manchester United at Liberty Stadium last weekend.
However, with United’s recent run of form, where they were held at home by Burnley and defeated by Fenerbahce in Istanbul, everyone expected Swansea to put a good performance and churn out a draw at least from the fixture. Instead, they were trailing by 3 goals in the first half, in what was a very subdued performance.
Swansea’s performance have not been up to the mark at all with the team winning only 1 and losing 8 in the 11 games played, conceding a whopping 21 goals. This clearly indicates that Bradley’s defence has been crumbling with even little pressure.
T4O looks at the 3 things Swansea should improve to turn their season while there is still time.
Strengthen the forward line
Swansea have two forwards up front in Borja Baston and Fernando Llorente. And like West Ham’s Simone Zaza, both have failed to perform in their debut Premier League season. While Baston has scored only 1 in 7 appearances this season, a lot was expected from the experienced Llorente. But the 31-year-old is yet to make any kind of impact on the team. Hence, the first thing Bradley should do in the January transfer window is to look for a striker who would finish the rare chances the team is getting.
Work on their defence
It is true that Swansea does not have the decent of defences in the Premier League but they have got their tactics wrong. Their defence was fully exposed against United who didn’t even have to put together 15 passes to pose any kind of threat. The back four looked confused and gave an enormous amount of spaces to United players to make any sort of run and play through ball. Mike Van der Hoorn’s goal came when the Swansea team started pressing that shows they can hit the target if they are more confident.
More support for Gylfi Sigurdsson
In Sigurdsson, Swansea have a great midfielder who has provided some of the best passes this season. He has scored twice this season and has 3 assists. If not for the failed strikers, Swansea could have been in a much better position by now.
Bradley really needs to have more support on the wings as well as behind the Iceland midfielder. The only player to be in good touch is Leroy Fer, who has bagged 4 times this season and perfectly shows what Swansea are missing.
