Swansea City 3 Charlton Athletic 1
And relax. That’s it then, all over.
Defeat on the final day of the season losing to Swansea 3-1 in South Wales.
The first half was classic end of season.
Second half Swansea stepped on it though and showed the technical chasm between a midtable side to us. Although let the record state that the Swans have spent 11 seasons in the Championship and 7 in the Premier League during the last 18 years.
We were getting overun in midfield, which has to have the most attention in this summer’s window. Subs came on, which in fairness were attack-minded but seemed to weaken us defensively.
With the game looking like it might peter out to a goalless draw, on 75 minutes Swansea took the lead through Idah. Miles Leaburn however was undertaking a one-man comeback, and he eventually scored heading home a Carey corner.
Sadly, especially so for those still celebrating in the away end, Swansea went back up the other end and retook the lead. Clarke giving the ball away and Idah scored his 3rd goal against us this season. That is half of the £6 million signing’s total for this season.
We huffed and puffed, Joe Rankin Costello came close to another equaliser, but Walta smashed in an unstoppable free-kick to secure Swansea the 3 points.
I was disappointed to see Kelman drop to the bench and Dykes start. I also question why Fevrier wasn’t given another run at wing back. I’d have thought we may have learnt more from seeing Fullah and Gough.
Yet, it was nice to see Conor Coady be given the armband, and his interview after was very endearing.
Lots to do in the summer, but last week was our day in the sun.
Rest up, Addicks.
🎙️ “We turned the ball over after a good bit of play and then we were open and we didn’t handle that well and that’s the learning curve. We need to get better, whether that’s through personnel or learning. We’ve stayed up this year and that’s important but I’m not in football to do that. I’m not just a survivor, I want to push boundaries, to do that you have to just survive at times. You have to make sure you do the first phase of everything and we’ve done that and now it’s time that we move forward.” — Nathan Jones
⭐️ Miles Leaburn
🏟️ 19,245 (1,850 Addicks)
📸 Kyle Andrews
On to the World Cup.
To be fair, there was nothing on the game, and if our season had gone to the last game we would still have stayed up, albeit dependent on results elsewhere. Did any of the players give 100%, I suggest not. The main thing was, that everyone came through without serious injury. So now, loan players go back to their parent clubs, and we retrieve ours that were loaned out. I am hoping we can look forward to an exciting transfer window, and the owners recognise the mamouth success of the club, keeping its Championship status, and back the management with hard cash.
Then of course,there is the World Cup!!!
The real hard work starts again over the weekend of 14th-16th of August.
A fantastic achievement finishing ahead of the likes of Blackburn, WBA and Leicester, albeit the points deduction helped.
As CA has commented we do not have a Championship level squad making this achievement even more impressive.
With something like 9 players out on loan I imagine most of these will be moved on creating room for championship ready players. We will ask the owners to dig even deeper into their pockets and lose even more money than they have already.
COYA
We had several players injured but this match underlined why we needed to get something out of the Hull match, imagine if we’d have lost last week…
When it came down to it Swansea were just a bit too strong for us and barring Miles Leaburn’s goal we didn’t create enough proper chances.
Let the rebuild begin…