Top Twenty Away Days This Century. Number 20.

The Swans recently put a poll out about the best away days in recent years and some of the selections and votes left me feeling underwhelmed. So I’m going to bring you my top 20 over the coming weeks and months and rank them in what I think is the correct order. This is a very tough ask so I’ve drawn up a system to try and separate the games based, on our performance, the occasion, the entertainment, the atmosphere and the result.

Each of these is ranked out of five to give a maximum score of 25. 

20. Liverpool 2-3 Swansea. January 2017

This game may have reached the final of the club’s twitter vote to decide our best away day, but I think that was over exaggerated and there are far better ones to come. Therefore we are starting off our count with our unlikely win at Anfield just after Paul Clement took charge.

Whilst it was a glorious win, it wasn’t as good an experience as you’d think. For example I had French people in front of me who were wearing Liverpool shirts, that gives you an indication of what the away end was like, plus we all had to sit as usual because of the restricted view seats.

Anyway about the game, the first half was very subdued but that no doubt suited us having shipped four at home to Arsenal the week before. We won a corner shortly after the restart and following a scramble Fernando Llorente poked the ball home to give us a shock lead.

The surprises kept coming when a superb overlap and cross from Tom Carroll (yes you did read that correctly) was buried by the Spaniard for his and our second goal. But just to reiterate about our away end, just look at the people at the front of the away end. No doubt they’re tourists because any Swans fan in there would have lost the plot. 

Shortly after our second, the host pulled a goal back through Roberto Firmino and in the 69th minute the Brazilian equalised and there was real fear that we would end up with nothing having previously been in a commanding position. But when Carroll broke forward again the ball ended up falling to Sigurdsson whose left footed shot found the bottom right corner to give us our first ever league win at Anfield and a huge confidence booster for the remainder of the campaign

Performance 4, Occasion 4, Entertainment 3, Atmosphere 2 , Result 5.

Overall 18