Considering that we are ranked bottom in the form of stats, I think this is an exceptional feat from Swansea and it shows how much ambition and drive the players have!
Now let us take a look at the fixtures history to see how is this being achieved.
There seems to be a very strange pattern over here! All of Swansea's losses thus far had been home games! Swansea had gotten 1/5 home wins and 4/4 away wins; with the only home win be against Man United who is sitting near the top of the table now =)
After examining various factors, I have come to the conclusion that Swansea's current stella form is influenced by 2 key points.
1) A highly successful transfer policy
Both defender signings have blended well into the squad and providing a rock hard defense. This can be seen from the fixture history where you will notice that in no game that Swansea has conceded more than 2 goals. To top it off, Matteo Ferrari even contributed a precious goal which resulted in a 1-0 away win against Chelsea! (Matteo Ferrari's factsheet can be seen in my Transfers post )
Johan Andersson also made a good contribution; having scored 1 goal in the 3 games he played in. Unfortunately, he got injured in Everton match and had been sideline for 3 months.
2) An unlikely hero
Andrea Orlandi was transfer listed before I joined Swansea as head coach and was offered to clubs when I decided that he was not in my first team plans. However as no club would want to pay the right price for him, I decided to give him a chance. Andrea grabbed it and repaid my faith when he replaced Scott Sinclair on the left wing after he was injured and scored 1 goal and provided 2 assists thus far.
While everything has been rosy for Swansea thus far, I cannot be too complacent. The reason we are successful right now is because of the rock solid defense we had but we had a great difficulty to scoring goals, especially from upfront. I will have to look to remedy that during the winter transfer window.
How have you enjoyed my Swansea Journey thus far? Is the blog easy to read? This is my first attempt at blogging so please let me know how can I make this more enjoyable =)
Added on: 12 Nov 2011 Requested by: Timo
As a first attempt at blogging, I think you can be quite proud. It is first of all easy to read. One of the major keys is that you should be enjoying creating the posts, because that is a large part of the motivation behind keeping the blog going. I might be a software engineer, but I get a real kick out of creative writing.
ReplyDeleteIn this post in particular, you've started to expand upon just the basic facts, which shows you're starting to feel more comfortable in your writing. It's totally up to you, how in-depth you want to go with details, but your bit about "an unlikely hero" is the kind of the thing that helps to make the blog more interesting.
Your team is also doing very well, especially to get the victories over Chelsea and Man Utd.
Thank you for your valuable advice. I will keep this in mind as I continue on my Swansea journey =)
ReplyDeleteHow can you beat team like man utd and chelsea (away) any special tactics you implement? it will be nice if you can share it with us :)
ReplyDeleteHi Timo, unfortunately I didnt keep my tactics for these 2 matches so I am unable to provide them. I posted their formations though and hopefully it will be of use to you. I frequently change my tactics according to the conditions of my squad and the oppositions so I hardly use a standard tactic at all. You can verify this with the pic I posted in the Season 1 - Review which describes my style as the tactical tinkerer :P
ReplyDeleteOh ya, I may not be able to post tactics for the old ones but I might be able to do it for current season. Just let me know if you want it for any of the matches :D
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