Planet Swans ArchivesBournemouth always looked likely to add to the two goals we pretty much gifted them in the first half and for long periods of the game the Swans defence just looked like a disaster waiting to happen with Ash and Kyle Bartley looking like they had never met never mind a defensive pairing.
Add to that the space that Kyle Naughton and Neil Taylor left exposed at full back for the speed of the Bournemouth attack and you can only really look back over the ninety minutes wondering quite how we escaped with a point.
Today was the day that we were told that the players would give us the performance and Garry Monk rung the changes with Bartley, Britton, Eder and Routledge all given starts ahead of Fernandez, Sigurdsson, Gomis and Montero.
The Swans started poorly with Ki guilty on numerous occasions of being slow to the tackle, wayward with the pass and lacking the fight that the Swans now need and for the early stages he was a passenger alongside Shelvey and Ayew in the Swans midfield.
The first goal was a gift as the ball was rolled across a static Swans defence that was left wide open by Ki and Naughton. That looked bad enough and whilst Routledge was denied an equaliser almost straight afterwards by a decent save it was not long before the second goal was coming.
And when it did it was farcical at best and in reality a disgrace for anyone who was wearing a white shirt on the pitch at the time. The Bournemouth player was given all the time that he wanted to pick out his man and when he did it was Gosling who guided it into the net to double the vistors lead.
The goal started the boos that were ringing out around the Liberty Stadium and the clap banners that had been placed on each seat were left pretty much redundant as Bournemouth celebrated what was turning into a bit of an embarrassment for us.
We though did exactly what was needed when you go two goals down and that is to pull one back. It seemed to have an element of fortune as everyone looked for the linesman’s flag but it never came and Ayew backheeled the ball home to halve the defecit.
Ten minutes later we had wiped out that deficit with the second goal which had its own element of fortune. It certainly looked a penalty from my seat in the East Stand but replays showed different but it was too late and Shelvey scored his first of the season from the spot to bring the Swans level.
That was the moment we should have pushed on and taken the game by the scruff of the neck but we didn’t. There is no point in dressing it up any other way, we sat back and we let Bournemouth get more and more confident and we were hell bent on giving them more.
It was only their wasteful finishing that stopped them getting the three points and I am sure they will look back on a match of what should have been once again.
The changes were laboured and predictable as three of the four players dropped replaced three of the four players that replaced them in the first place and the game had that predictable feel about it. When Montero is on the pitch we now resort to picking him out with the perfect pass but sadly he lacks the perfect control or perfect cross all too often to make it an effective tactic.
It is one point more towards the end of season tally but this was not what we expected from the afternoon and given the performance I suspect we are more relieved with the point than our visitors are.
Remember when we beat Man Utd at home at the end of August? So do I, three months without a home win tells you a very sorry story. Never mind it’s Liverpool next and as I type they are 3-0 up at the Ethiad…
<#afcb #SWABOU>
