Swansea v Luton

K

keith margam

Vital Football Legend
Sun 29 Dec 15:00 Swansea v Luton

Preston lost to QPR last Saturday, Swans lost to Hull.

Preston beat Hull yesterday, Swans beat QPR.

It’s a funny old game as Greavsie used to say.

The merry-go-round of football in the Championship eh!

After our moral sapping defeat against bottom club Hull, a club that hadn’t won in 13 matches, nobody was predicting a win against unbeaten in 7 games QPR with any confidence. We then go on to produce our best performance of the season and put three goals past them without reply.

The challenge now is to reproduce that form in the remaining three matches of a hectic holiday schedule, Luton at home on Sunday, Portsmouth away next Wednesday and WBA at home three days later on the Saturday.

Luton first then. Surprisingly they are having a poor season in the Championship after relegation from the Premier League last season, whilst the other two relegated clubs Burnley and Sheffield United are on course to bounce straight back up with the help of their parachute payments.

In what is some strange scheduling of matches we played at Luton in the reverse fixture as recently as 7 Dec, three weeks ago.

Remember Cabango’s under hit back pass gifting Adebayo a goal, Grimes equalising second-half for the 1-1 draw with Swans dominating possession and having 10 shots to 2 on target.

Our problem is going to be utilising our small squad to good effect in these last three of five crammed matches.
 
Swans unchanged

Swans: Lawrence Vigouroux, Josh Key, Ben Cabango, Harry Darling, Josh Tymon, Matt Grimes (c), Goncalo Franco, Liam Cullen, Ronald, Jisung Eom, Florian Bianchini

Subs: Jon McLaughlin, Jay Fulton, Zan Vipotnik, Nathan Tjoe-A-On, Cyrus Christie, Myles Peart-Harris, Kyle Naughton, Ben Lloyd, Azeem Abdulai



Luton: Thomas Kaminski, Amari Bell, Mark McGuinness, Tom Krauss, Carlton Morris (c), Elijah Adebayo, Marvelous Nakamba, Tahith Chong, Jordan Clark, Tom Holmes, Joe Johnson

Subs: Tim Krul, Reuell Walters, Victor Moses, Cauley Woodrow, Pelly Ruddock Mpanzu, Erik Pieters, Joe Taylor, Daiki Hashioka, Zack Nelson
 
Swans 2 (Franco 38’, Harris 91’) - Luton 1 (Morris 5’)

Some Swans fans were saying after the match that Franco was targeted by the Luton players, being the engine room of our midfield and scorer of our first-half equaliser. He only lasted minutes into the second-half before being hit in the chops by McGuiness, who was already on a yellow card. The weak and inexperienced ref, who for the most part let Luton get away with their bullying tactics, missed the incident. Franco was taken to hospital with a facial injury although Luke Williams said afterwards that in his opinion the clash was accidental.

Luton played an aggressive high-press from the start and our defence was unsettled by it. Swans defenders were unable to move the ball out effectively from the back and from one of several return passes back to Vigouroux the under pressure goalkeeper kicked the ball straight to Palmer, who fired home to gift Luton the lead. Franco equalised on 38 minutes for the Swans in a goalmouth scramble to make it 1-1 at half-time.

Second-half Luton made a come-back but were hampered by the sending-off of Johnson on 68 minutes for two yellow cards.

The Hatters made a brave and robust defensive effort with ten men and held out until a late Peart-Harris header on 91 minutes gave Swansea the winner. Their overwhelming match stats of 73% possession and 20 to 4 shots on goal finally getting the result their play deserved.
 
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