With just six games remaining till the end of the Premier League season, things are starting to look bleak once again for Swansea City.
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Wins for their Saturday opponents West Ham and Crystal Palace, and the recent form shown by the previously-considered doomed Hull City, have left the winless in five Swans in the thick of a relegation dogfight once again.
The Swans have conceded a staggering 67 goals in the league this season which, make no bones about it, is absolutely terrible and many would argue that they are deserving of their place in the relegation zone. Maybe they are.
However, there’s a few reasons why it would be shame to lose the Swans from England’s top flight.
Paul Clement’s appointment on the face of things seemed reasonable – a manager, who once won the Premier League as Carlo Ancelotti’s number two at Chelsea with fantastic coaching abilities and a pretty decorated CV. He seems like a man that with time in England’s top flight could get the Welsh club playing the attractive brand of football they were once associated with in the Premier League
Swansea have always tried to adopt an aesthetically pleasing style of football and surely they have to be respected for that. It’s been that way for a number of years, suggesting that there is an in-built ethos at the Liberty Stadium. It is a style that has been know to yield goals, and that’s what we all want to see from a team, right?
That ethos, instilled by one Roberto Martinez, has evidently done a disappearing act for most of the current season, but credit should be given to the board for their sense of urgency in trying to rectify the issue.
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Some might argue that Francesco Guidolin and Bob Bradley weren’t given enough time. As every football fan knows though, it’s a results business and Clement has proved he can string together a run and get his team playing.
The 2013 League Cup winners have also become something of a ‘second team’ for many fans around the country, due to their attractive football and underdog story. At least they certainly were before the firing of Garry Monk. They were a team with a defined style, who you could get behind in previous seasons.
With stars such as Gylfi Sigurdsson, Fernando Llorente, Leroy Fer and youngster Alfie Mawson in their ranks, one gets the feeling of ‘they’re too good on paper to be where they are’, which is another reason why it’d be a shame to lose them – you expect them to be challenging for mid table, as they did under Brendan Rodgers, to top half finishes rather than flirting with relegation
From a romance perspective, when a club comes up through the lower tiers of English football as Swansea have, it becomes somewhat difficult to then be OK with that team potentially going back down. As everybody knows, the Championship is a notoriously hard division to gain promotion from, but historically very easy for relegated Premier League sides to end up suffering the very same fate again. Just ask Bolton, Sheffield United, Coventry, Charlton, Blackpool, Portsmouth.
If it is to be a swansong season for the Liberty outfit, it would certainly be a big shame to lose a club of such good intentions, and the Premier League will be losing one of the more entertaining football teams of the past few years from the division.?
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