Preview Swansea City come to the Vic on Saturday in desperate search of points after Palarse's stunning victory over Wengers Pension Fund FC (formally known as 4th place celebrators). They need to kickstart points after a 5 game winless streak where they failed to get results against weaker opponents. They have some tough match ups to come in the last 6 games after this trip to the Vic. Watford are almost there (66/1 for the drop) so a win would get them to 40 points and the chance to put their fatigued feet up for the last 6. It can't be a nil nil as both sides need something from the game so expect some entertainment and goals. Famous last words of course. Swansea have a pretty awful shot accuracy count for the season at 37%, however Watford's is worse at 34% they also haven't had a red card this season and we have had a bucket load (4). Our passing accuracy of 72% is way behind the Swans 78% also. Head to Head Swansea have beaten the Hornets 20 times in this fixture with 13 going the way of Watford and 11 draws. In Premier times it is 1 win each (1-0) and a 0-0 draw this season at the Liberty Stadium. Swansea Facts 5 years ago Watford fans would have looked at the achievements of a club like Swansea and been extremely envious. Well run, playing good football and with a young manager in place that was on an upward curve. Quality football played on the deck was the order of the day and Swansea regularly gave some of the bigger Premier teams a good game - even doing the double over Arsenal and Manchester United in one season. A brief sortie into Europe via winning the League Cup also occurred for the Swans in 2013. The sacking of Garry Monk started a downward trend for the club in 2015 (having lost Joe Allen for £15 million then Willfried Bony for £28 million) and appointments of Guidolin then the admirable but out of his depth Bob Bradley left the club in danger of the drop having not been above 15th place since the 5th week of the season. Paul Clement initially got results with 3 wins from 5 inlcuding a cracking win at Anfield however the club is now up against it with its last win coming at home to Burnley over a month ago. The club was bought for £1 in 2002. They moved to the Liberty Stadium in 2005 from Vetch Field, there home for almost 90 years. Swansea once sacked a manager after 6 days in charge, something even the Pozzo's haven't yet done. He was even taken out of the half time team talk so the Chairman could set up the team. Club Connections Dai Thomas played for both clubs. He also played for Cardiff City. Daft bugger. Sir Nigel Gibbs - current Assistant Coach and Watford legend. Kenny Jackett - managed the Swans and Watford legend. Expected Line Ups Probably lots of changes for the Hornets again due to fitness, fatigue but strangely never due to form. Deeney appears to oddly be slightly out of favour with the coach after his recent media exploits setting up his charity foundation. Stefano Okaka was quoted in the media that Mazzarri is a good coach so expect his subsequent media exploits to get him more game time. Swansea have a doubt over Jack Cork who had started every game under Paul Clement. Top scorer Fernando Llorente is expected to be in the side after coming on as a sub against West Ham last week. Swansea Forum Links http://www.fansnetwork.co.uk/football/swanseacity/forum https://thejack.army/ http://www.swansea.vitalfootball.co.uk/forum/category-view.asp Form Guide Watford sit 10th in the form table over ten matches with 4 wins, 2 draws and 4 defeats. We have only lost 1 in the last 6 homes matches so the home form has largely got us out of danger for the season. Swansea sit 15th with 3 wins, 1 draw and 6 defeats. They have also lost 5 away games on the bounce and not had an away draw in 11 matches. Walter Out-O-Meter After two home wins, one of which was a very good team effort, the other a ground out win against the bottom club, Walter put an attacking side out against Spuds and we lost. This lunacy enraged the Walter out brigade to the point that some ended up on Arsenal Fan TV ranting about it as no one really cares about football managers anymore unless you are a Gooner. Cheeky Bet Watford are 7/5 for a home win. Swansea 19/10 and the draw 23/10. A 4-3 Watford win is offered at 150/1 if you should be inclined to dabble. Prediction It can't be nil nil so expect a ding dong rip roaring 4-3 win to the Hornets. A last minute goal from Troy Deeney that tires him so much celebrating Walter doesn't play him again for the rest of the season.
Win this and we're safe and we will be able to compete for 9th place. Lose this and the pressure is back on and the potential to drop to 16th. Without being too pessimistic, I hope we can get at least 3 points out of this game and Hull because I can't really see many points coming from Liverpool, Leicester,Everton, Man City and Cheslea
It's definitely a champions league or championship, 6 point boom or bust, must win, but don't lose, game We've been pretty decent flat track bullies at home in the last couple of season and I can't see much more than that.. 1-0
Fatigued feet? Got to be :whoosh: Most of our players don't deserve a holiday. We need a Sanninio order of two weeks of post season training. In fact if they start pre-season training now they might be ready for a relegation batter come Xmas. Other than that lovely write up:sign15: MOTD will bow to pressure and put us on first. It'll be the last ever time this century as Swans will nick it 1 nil in the last 5 mins after a dull as ditch water game.
Got to play for the win? As Cave Man says 3 points and we can relax (even HB1) They seem to be think we are big and physical...expect Deeney to come back? Llorente will be a threat though and of course as the title suggests Sigurdsson is their best player.
Their Jack army lot seem to be thinking an easy away win. We probably think an easyish home win. Probably be 0-0.
Should they be relegated then we could do very much worse than pull out all the stops to Get Gylfi ...
Barrow looked really good the few times I saw him earlier on in the season and someone I thought would be quite interesting to bring in. Maybe I was wrong and he's not that great as just looked and has been loaned out to Leeds! Shows what I know.
We all have our favourites. Some would prove to be good punts and some would prove to be damp squibs. It's a bit of a lottery and there will be plenty of those who are professionally involved in the game who will have a better take on it all than us amateur punters on here. Luke Dowling for example. But I think you'd find it hard to find any pundit, amateur or professional, who didn't think that Gylfi Sigurdsson really is the bizz. He cut it at Spurs too but left them to return to his 'roots' for reasons best known to them (and him). But he obviously likes playing in the Prem. So, if he's unable to do that with the Swans next season, I see nothing wrong in suggesting a sideways move to a club of similar stature who will still be in it.
There's a thread on one of the Swansea forums asking whether they should drop Sigurdssun. Most don't want to but they all seem to agree he's been underperforming all season, especially when he's been played out wide like in recent games. I'm more worried about Llorente - our three centre backs that are the best headers of the ball are all out, leaving us with short-for-a-centre-back Mariappa, weak in the air Kabasele and Cathcart, whose biggest flaw is switching off from crosses. As for our team, in the next couple of days we'll get news of our new unexpected training ground injuries. This time I'm going for Cathcart (dropped a jam jar on his foot) and Kabasele (cramp relapse). Walter will play Amrabat at centre back, after his magnificent showing in central midfield last week and Zuniga up front because he saw Deeney and Okaka both yawn during the week and decided they were too fatigued.
Sound reasoning SLB but I think Walt will be unable to select Troy as he will have turned into an enormous easter egg.This happened after he consumed his own body weight in chocolate during a very tense episode of Pointless. Holebas will be unavailable. He will be locked in his broom cupboard by the Ocado delivery boy after Holebas got umpty with him over insufficient taramasalata. Saturday will be sunny and The Bat will be unable to play due to an obscure health and safety directive,found in the vaults of Swansea District Council. It states that too much glare will come from Nordin's grizzled pate and in the absence of 20,000 pairs of sunglasses,he will be banned. Capoue will need shoulder surgery due to RFPTTS ( repetitive finger pointing to the sky ) and Niang will have taken the remainder of the squad bungey jumping in Padstow. Match postponed and rescheduled for 20 minutes before the Everton game.
If the Sunderland/West Brom squad turns up for this one then I would expect a win here. I used to think Swansea had too much to go down but it looks like they've done a bit of falling apart recently. They strike me as a more capable Middlesbrough at this point in the season. No reason we can't win this as our squad generally is more capable than theirs, though a previous commenter fairly pointed out that Llorente will be a difficult aerial threat to deal with.
In the absence of Smudger's factoids, this shamelessly ripped off the TS website: This will be the fourth time Watford and Swansea have faced each other in the Premier League, while the Swans will do so with their fourth different manager since the first meeting in September 2015 (Garry Monk, Alan Curtis, Bob Bradley and Paul Clement). Watford and Swansea have combined to produce 68 shots (inc. blocks) in their three previous meetings in the competition, however only two goals have been scored (one each). The away side has yet to score in any of the previous three Premier League games between these two. Valon Behrami’s only red card in 102 Premier League appearances came in this exact fixture last season (September 2015). Watford have been given a joint-league high four red cards in the Premier League this season, while no club have received as many yellow cards (72). José Holebas has been given 12 yellow cards in the Premier League this season; three more than any other player. He’s not been booked in any of his last four Premier League appearances, but is yet to go five in a row without a booking in 2016-17. A league-high 24% of the total shots that Swansea City have attempted this season in the Premier League have been from headers, while they have also attempted the most headed shots (84). The Hornets have scored the highest proportion of goals in the opening 15 minutes of Premier League games this season – 25% (9/36). Swansea’s tally of 67 goals conceded is the joint-seventh highest by a side after 32 games of a Premier League season. All 14 teams to have conceded 64+ goals after 32 games in a Premier League season have been relegated. Troy Deeney has scored six goals in his last eight Premier League starts for Watford, including his last four appearances at Vicarage Road in the competition.
Holebas' chances of getting the yellow card record looks to be in peril. He needs to get a move on if he's to hit the magic 15 by the time the game with Man City is over.
I would love to beat Swansea to make this odious creep's day...http://www.standard.co.uk/news/lond...-sensation-and-is-butt-of-online-8464600.html
I have to say the match previews on here have been outstanding this season.. give yourselves a :sign15: One question though. Who decides who's going to do the next one? Is there a secret club that sit around in a darkened room discussing it? Or is it simply first come first served?
Someone sent a message out at the start of the season asking who wanted to do one. They then randomly allocated matches to whoever said they wanted to do it. If I had one left I'd offer it to you if you were interested, but both mine have gone unfortunately.
I'd never seen this. What a vile little so and so. I hate to agree with Joey Barton, but Hazzard should've kicked him harder.
I can see this one being an uninteresting 1-0. I can also see a slight chance of Swansea nicking a point, but I'm confident we won't come away empty handed.
