Russell Martin and a host of familiar faces will square up to his old club Swansea City on Tuesday ( KO 3pm ) with the howls of anger towards him now in the dim and distant past from Southampton fans a mere memory. After a lengthy unbeaten run the Saints are now in the top six and fighting for one of those two top automatic spots.
The Championship is indeed stronger this season compared to recent times. We have an unlikely but welcome Ipswich Town, Leeds United, Leicester City, a resurgent Hull City, and of course Russell Martin’s Southampton. The calls for Martin’s removal spilled over in to October but since then the owners, Sport Republic co-founders Rasmus Ankersen and Henrik Kraft have been showing what supporting their manager is all about, and the team have improved immensely. Martin took time to settle down with a fair chunk of his staff leaving the Swans with him, but now the top end of the Championship looks very promising for him.
Regardless of how you see Russell Martin’s time and departure from Swansea City, we are now seeing his new club playing football which is a complete polar opposite to what we witness in west Wales these days. That damage only took five months under a new Chairman in Andrew Coleman, a recently sacked manager in Michael Duff, and a constant emphasis on running before even a few baby steps have been taken. It’s been a disastrous first half of the season, the football is awful at times and the style of play Swans fans are so used to has slowly declined. The defence still remains an issue, the players brought in to the positions that really needed strengthening are very hit and miss, and the club are not keen on appointing a new head coach until they find the right one. Meanwhile Sunderland and Southampton have done that expeditiously. We say the Swans aren’t ‘keen’ to appoint a new head coach, we could add to that they can’t find one, or as in numerous press reports, including on here, they’ve been knocked back or heard negative responses from targeted managers.
Pinch of salt comments which some buy and many do not. Regardless of the loud protests against the current ownership on Friday night, the content isn’t that important, but they should note it’s heading south quickly. The table reflects that.
We are seeing some promising news for interim Swansea head coach Alan Sheehan with Nathan Wood back in for selection and Joe Allen on the bench last time out. Liam Walsh is playing really well at this time as well. The omission of Charlie Patino and Ollie Cooper on Friday was met with some criticism, but the 2-1 win was heartening for the Jack Army, despite their noisy chants. Those two goals from Jamie Paterson were classically taken, and he is most certainly leading from the front. It’s so good to see after his blips since he came to the club.
The difference between the clubs going in to this game is that in early October Martin spun his clubs performances around whilst the Swans could only stutter and occupy the bottom half of the table. This game has the Saints as clear favourites, there should be a capacity home end and a healthy Swans away support. Anything taken from this game would be a huge positive for Alan Sheehan, his slow momentum and desire to be the next Swansea head coach is becoming evident.
More on the game as we get closer to kick off.