Swansea v Middlesbrough

K

keith margam

Vital Football Legend
Swansea v Middlesbrough Easter Monday 17:30

Middlesbrough are the opposition and its another top of the table club who come looking for points. It’s also a rather odd kick-off time with an early evening start to fit in with Sky Sports coverage of the game

Both teams suffering a blip in form recently, Boro four games without a win and Swans three games without a win. Boro lost at home on Good Friday 1-2 to Millwall, who leapfrogged over them into second place. So the Boro will be desperate to get back on track against us, let’s hope we are up for it. They have the Championships joint best defence with Ipswich who have played two fewer games and will surely be a tough nut to crack.

Boro last six WWLDDL

Swans last six LWWLLD

Their manager Kim Hellberg should have been our manager. He was all set to come to us last November from Hammarby IF in Sweden, but Boro appeared from nowhere and hijacked the deal last minute and made him a better offer after losing Rob Edwards to Wolves.

For this reason alone I hope we can spoil the party and snatch the points.
 
Swansea 2 (Vipotnik 20’ pen, 45’ pen) -

Middlesborough 2 ( Bangura 12’, Conway 75’ pen)

Probably the best performance by a visiting team this season. Our tactics seemed to be sit back and hit them on the break, which allowed Boro to dominate possession 35% - 65%. They were stronger on the ball than us and retained possession well, albeit their fouls were mostly ignored by the ref, but that aside Boro should have won. In contrast it was a brave defensive display by the Swans, with Cabango and Burgess looking solid. Parker had a nervous start and was targeted by Boro. He was left exposed several times, one of which led to the opener, but he recovered and looked good going forward and surely deserves more game time. Both our penalties were deserved with a third one, hand ball, ignored. I felt the ref tried to level things up by awarding their penalty for an Eom foul, it looked a dive from where I was sitting but I haven’t seen it back. We had our chances to win against the odds but so did they and a draw was probably a fair result in the end.

Having seen both Coventry and Middlesbrough recently, one thing it has shown us is the gap in class we have to bridge if we are ever going to challenge for promotion out of this league.
 
Last edited:
A decent game from us yesterday. Could have conceded more but you can also praise the defensive performance, we put in so many blocks and gave them nothing from set pieces.

With the amount of points Matos has taken, if we can start to control games, we could be a good side next season.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.