Swansea City’s squad are already safely installed within striking distance of St Andrews this morning. The not so good news is the usual suspects going down with injuries again.
Azeem Abdulai, Josh Key, Liam Walsh, Harrison Ashby,and Josh Ginnelly and now Ben Cabango are all out for todays game against Birmingham City. It’s Luke Williams debut fixture in the league as Swans head coach and he confirmed the injury news yesterday. "Liam Walsh is away from the club at the moment as he needs things to settle down before we make a better plan for his recovery. I know him well, he is a great player and I look forward to having him back. There is a small issue with Azeem, he had some problems when he came off and he will be a few weeks as we make sure we bring him back the right way. It can be normal that these things happen after a long time, out so we need to be careful. Harrison might have a small issue, nothing too serious but will see how he goes, while Josh is out for a few more weeks.”
The Swans have put to one side any discussions of a new contract for Liam Walsh. He is out of contract in June and concerns are clearly surfacing regards his fitness and appearance record since signing for Swansea City. On his day he is a wonderful midfielder, but those days are not that frequent. We are still reviewing the information gathered yesterday on ‘potential’ transfers incoming. There’s a few question marks, but things are becoming slightly more clearer. Mind you by the time certain folk have read beyond 280 Twitter characters it’s time for a nappy change !
Harry Darling has had another moment in front of the Swans TV cameras. Some Swansea followers believe he is ‘Captain’ material, we can’t fall out with that. On the new Swans head coach he said, "A lot of us know him already and I think that helps. It’s an exciting time and we are looking forward to working with him. I really enjoyed working with him at MK so I know him as an assistant. He is probably different as a gaffer, but I loved working with him so I’m excited about working with him. I think his style will be a bit different. Already, he has shown us patterns in training, and as a group we want to implement it on match days”
We expect change, and to be honest it was needed, Luke Williams has mentioned this as well this week. On the travelling Jack Army today he is clear though. "That is what makes this place beautiful, that it is nearly its own island. We do things differently here. I know how difficult it is to travel to these games, so we have to make sure we give them something on Saturday.I know it is unlikely we will be able to give them an unbelievable performance that will be the best they have ever seen, but the fans will want to see a spark on Saturday that hopefully will ignite a fire in time. I’m going to make sure players and staff understand that the sacrifice to travel is huge, so we need to create some brilliant moments of excitement that they can talk about and all those little things that make it worth travelling for supporters.”
Swans bullet points.
⚽️ Thursday January 25th at 7.45pm is the time and date for the FA Cup fourth round tie on the south coast against Bournemouth. Despite it not being mentioned by the FA, LIVE coverage of the game is available on S4C. A lack of ‘communication’ there by someone. To be expected though. The date, time and location is hardly going to get Swans fans in a queue for tickets.
⚽️ Swans TV have put together some nice footage of Luke Williams and co this week. You can watch that below.
⚽️ Luke Williams press conference pre Birmingham City is below.
Travelling Jacks today will be over 1,800 in number. Be safe, be noisy and you never know, something positive may well happen come 5pm tonight. Team news later.