Over the summer it was refreshing to see some optimism in SA1 for the first time in a good while. There’d been long overdue investment in the playing squad, high profile investors Luka Modric and Snoop Dogg had joined the ownership group, season ticket sales had increased and after a good run at the end of last season there was expectation that we would be looking up rather than down.
But the truth is, in spite of all of those positives, if you employ a manager who is totally out of his depth then you’re not going to be successful, and sadly that’s exactly what Alan Sheehan is right now. I wrote here at the end of last season that I had grave concerns regarding him having the job on a full time basis and sadly they’ve come true.
Although when you delve a bit deeper, the stats suggest we’re even worse than what the league table suggests. Our XG is the worst in the division on 12.5 with Derby the next one up on 14.8. For shots on target we’re averaging a miserly 3.3 per game with only Sheffield United and Derby lower than us. Our touches in the opposition box are 249, again only Derby are below us there. The most damning one of all though is big chances. There’s only been fifteen of them which is the lowest by a mile. Even Sheffield Wednesday whose owner has sabotaged them have eight more than us, it’s absolutely pathetic and Sheehan has had the nerve to claim he’s an “attacking coach”.
Defensively we’re not ranked as badly but our XG against still isn’t great with us in 15th. The issue is though when you’re that bad going forward you really need to be in the top six at the back to offset it, and we’re nowhere near that.
Sheehan was our set piece coach before he was given the full time job so you’d think we’d at least be good at that. Only one team in the Championship has failed to score from a set piece so far this term, who do you think that is? Deeply embarrassing for a so called expert in this field.
We’re not exactly great at defending them either, we’ve conceded five times from such situations with nine sides having conceded more. Again, as this was his previous job there should be a serious question asked in terms of why this part of the game isn’t one of our strengths.
The final stat I’ll give you is the XG adjusted league table. That puts us in 22nd, a relegation place so that tells you where we’re heading if this carries on. The reason we’re not there now is thanks to Zan Vipotnik’s scoring exploits and the fact that Lawrence Vigouroux is a top goalkeeper.
Stats aren’t everything of course, but when you watch us none of this should be a surprise because it shows during games. It’s no shock that our best display this season came against Manchester City either. We started well and got in their faces but when the opposition started to turn the screw as was always likely we decided to sit deep and stop them playing through us. This is Sheehan’s type of game, at the fans forum earlier in the season it was very telling that most of the presentation that he gave was about us playing without the ball, and it shows because when we’ve got it we don’t know what to do with it.
That presentation was a major red flag, Swansea managers should never have that mentality. Our most successful sides have always been the one’s who’ve dominated possession, not for the sake of having the ball but to play progressively, create chances and score goals. We shouldn’t be appointing managers who want to move us away from that, ( I know our possession stats are high, but that’s down to the opposition letting us have it as they know we don’t know what to do with it)
Sheehan was also part of two unsuccessful regimes prior to getting the job and brought in initially by the disastrous Paul Watson. There’s enough red flags there to suggest he wouldn’t be the right man to bring success to the club.
Some of our other most recent appointments have had their flaws but nearly all of them were shafted in the transfer market (even Duff to a point because the signings were so awful). They all would’ve loved to have had the level of backing that Sheehan has had over the summer and would no doubt have been able to improve us had that been the case. This manager has somehow made us worse! This is our worst points total after 15 games of a Championship season since relegation yet we’ve spent a fortune. How on earth can that be deemed acceptable?
There will be scrutiny on the signings to come, there’s no doubt some of them haven’t hit the heights yet. But I’d expect an improvement if a change is made.
The simple truth is this can’t go on, the optimism of the summer is now a distant memory. The ground was half empty by the time the full time whistle went against Ipswich and those that stayed voiced their displeasure loudly at the manager. Once you’ve lost the fans you’re a dead man walking, it’s a matter of time until it ends. But the hierarchy must act now and make a change before we waste a season in which the Championship feels weaker than ever.
There’s plenty of matches left for a new manager to turn this around, and although we’re 18th we have a nice buffer of seven points to the relegation zone so there wouldn’t be pressure for instant results and we’re eight points off the top six. Now I’m not saying we can make that up, but a better coach could no doubt get more out of this group and we need to start aiming higher instead of writing games off.
I’ll give you an example, until yesterday Leicester had won only one of their last ten league games and I’m sure you know who that was against. Yet before the game there seemed to be a consensus that it was a free hit. It wasn’t, this isn’t little old Swansea. We’ve spent a fortune by our standards and should be believing we can compete with anyone in the league.
But with Sheehan it feels like we can’t compete with anyone. It’s time for the ownership to act and make a change if they don’t want their investment to go to waste.
