Swansea City will take on Huddersfield Town this afternoon (3pm) at the John Smith’s Stadium in Yorkshire. Terriers manager, André Breitenreiteris in a perilous position as his club will see this as a must win game to give them some hope of avoiding relegation.
André Breitenreiter has been at the club since February winning only two of his ten matches in charge. He himself will be fidgety as the season draws to a close, especially if Huddersfield do go down. The Swans have little concern regards injuries with Nathan Wood allegedly a potential returnee. The game holds little significance for Swansea City, and they are only playing for pride. Huddersfield will no doubt see it as a good opportunity to put the Swans under pressure and hope they perform as badly as they did at Middlesbrough a few weeks ago.
If they do this is a nailed on home win.
Next week the Terriers face Birmingham City at home in an even more important game if there can be one at this time of the season. They then travel to Ipswich Town on the final day. The Swans have Norwich City away next week followed by a last day fixture at home to Millwall.
Breitenreiter was firm yesterday when talking about the Swans, "Then we started in the week with high motivation, every player who is possible to play on Saturday is fit. There is no new information about injuries, so we concentrate on Swansea. It’s a good team, they play good, attacking football. They are very able in the style of play, so they won the last two games. Like the last few weeks, we have always the opportunity to win games, and then we need also the quality on the pitch to show that over ninety minutes, especially in defending the chances from Swansea, but also to create chances and score goals. Then we have a big chance to win. We concentrate on the first game. It’s clear that it’s just in our own hands, because of the home game against Birmingham, so it’s possible to stay in the league. It’s not necessary to watch the other results, but then we have to win the next two games, and then maybe we can decide what happens in Ipswich, but first totally focus to Swansea”
Luke Williams, the Swans head coach said before setting out for Yorkshire, "We have all but ticked off the first big hurdle, which was to maintain the league status," said the Swansea head coach. Now we have a bit of a rebuild. We have got a lot of work to do and we have to get a lot of things correct to make sure we are in a good position. That's the task in front of us." That’s a strange quote, he seems as laid back about this fixture as recent away performances by his team have displayed. It sounded more like a shrug of the shoulder comment than anything else. He seemed more concerned about the summer and the rebuild ahead. Talk of contracts for seven players, Joe Allen, Kyle Naughton, Liam Walsh, Jamie Paterson, Przemyslaw Placheta, Liam Cullen and Nathanael Ogbeta were clearly distracting the Swans head coach prior to this game.
We shall see what Swansea turns up this afternoon. It’s hard to actually ask your team to turn up with some pride, but that’s where we are this season. Hoping in the face of adversity.
Team news later.
More importantly check out our rolling news story, the passing of a great, Leighton James.
That’s here —> ⚽️Leighton James respects
Good bless you Leighton.