Swansea City were beaten comfortably by Stoke City on Monday evening after Wilfried Bony netted twice against his former club.
Stoke City’s Wilfried Bony scores their first goal
Stoke City secured three points in comfortable fashion against Swansea City at the Bet365 Stadium on Monday evening.
Wilfried Bony netted twice for mark Hughes’ men and Alfie Mawson managed to turn the ball passed his own keeper as the Potters continued their good form.
Bob Bradley will have been furious about the fashion in which his team conceded the first goal. From a set-piece situation it was all-to easy for Joe Allen to get into a good area and provide a ball Wilfried Bony dreams of latching onto.
Stoke City’s Wilfried Bony scores their first goal
Far too easy from Swansea’s point of view and they have to remove these types of concessions from their game if they want a chance of staying up this term.
Wayne Routledge delivered a much-improved performance, particularly in the first half, after disappointing with below average performances for much of the season so far.
He reacted brilliantly and showed real strength for the goal, a real positive for Bob Bradley.
Swansea City’s Wayne Routledge scores their first goal
The former QPR winger was one of the Swans’ main outlets in the first period and showed just how dangerous he can be on his day, something Swansea will need to see more of to help them battle the drop this season.
Swansea rode their luck to get into the break on level terms with Stoke hitting the woodwork three times in the first period, but there were improvements on show from Bob Bradley’s men.
The positives didn’t last too long in the second half though, and Stoke’s second was once again far too easy.
Ramadan Sobhy took on Angel Rangel and despite it being blatantly obvious that he was going to cut inside, the Spanish full-back failed to telegraph the move, and allowed Sobhy to put a dangerous ball across the box for Mawson to inadvertently deflect into his own net.
Swansea City’s Alfie Mawson scores an own goal for Stoke’s second goal
Sloppy defending from Rangel who replaced Kyle Naughton in the first half due to injury.
The defensive frailties didn’t end there, Joe Allen left Wales team-mate Neil Taylor behind with ease before setting up Wilfried Bony to score for the second time of the evening, and the contest was over with just over 15 minutes remaining.
Neil Taylor has struggled for the majority of this season and the ease of which Allen left him behind, should probably be enough for Bob Bradley to start looking at possible replacements. – Swansea just can’t afford to start players in such poor form.
It was three poor defensive mistakes which cost Swansea at least a share of the spoils on Monday night and unfortunately, it’s a characteristic we often see from teams who finish in the bottom three come May.
Stoke City’s Erik Pieters in action with Swansea City’s Wayne Routledge
There are some signs that Swansea have the battling spirit needed but in reality, they look too blunt going forward and too frail at the back.
Bob Bradley will need significant funding in January to add the quality needed to keep the club in the Premier League this season, there’s little doubt about that.
Credit to Stoke, they were very professional and even classy in areas but their opposition made it far too easy for them to secure all three points.
Swansea now enter another set of very difficult fixtures and unless they secure some unexpected points, they could be in real trouble heading into the back-end of 2016.
Swansea City manager Bob Bradley
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