The first thing to say is that Garry Monk always knew this season would be a hell of a lot tougher for Swansea City. He made that very point in his office last May, only 72 hours after doing the double over Arsenal and at a time when he was trying to play down the idea that he was in the running for the manager of the year award, and returned to the same theme during a conversation at the start of pre-season training a couple of months later.
The sun was shining, that record-breaking eighth-placed finish was still fresh in the memory and everyone was walking around the training ground at Landore with a spring in their step, yet Monk was preaching caution. “I realise how incredibly hard this season is going to be,” he said. “We were great last season, couldn’t have asked for much better as a first season for myself, but this is going to be even harder with everything that is riding on it. The competitiveness of the league will be so intense, so I think we have to be prepared and ready for that.”
Although expectations were raised among supporters after Swansea narrowly missed out on qualifying for Europe, Monk knew that there needed to be a sprinkling of realism around the place. Twelve months earlier he had stood in front of the Swansea players and told them that their target for the season was to beat the club’s record Premier League points haul. Swansea did that and more, so much so that it was impossible to deliver the same speech again this summer.
Monk is fiercely ambitious, yet the sky is not the limit in the football dressing room. Objectives need to be challenging but achievable, otherwise players quickly become demotivated and start wondering what on earth they are working towards, as one former Swansea manager discovered on Merseyside when he set a long-term goal for the season that was already out of reach before the leaves had started to fall from the trees.
Swansea, in fairness, started this campaign brightly. Eight points were gained from the opening four games as they signed off for the first international break of the season with an impressive home victory over Manchester United. Monk was flavour of the month. He stopped at a garage on the way home from the United game to fill up his car and a Swansea fan walked up and handed over a can of Guinness. Three months later and he could be forgiven for keeping his head down in the city, which seems a bizarre state of affairs.
On reflection – and Monk does plenty of reflection as part of his personal development – that first international break came at a bad time for Swansea. Several players were away creating history with their countries in European Championship qualifiers, experiencing huge emotional highs, and then came back down to earth with a bump with a trip to Vicarage Road. Swansea were poor that day, lost 1-0 to Watford and the seeds were sown for a damaging run in which they have won only one of their past nine league matches.
All the while Monk’s future has turned into a soap opera. The 36-year-old has been on the brink of getting the sack in one newspaper or another for a month now and at times it is hard to make any sense of the situation. Swansea have never called a board meeting to discuss the manager’s position and are exasperated by all the speculation, yet Huw Jenkins, the chairman, dedicated his programme column to the club’s predicament last Saturday and never mentioned Monk by name once.
Although that seemed rather odd, Monk was unequivocal when he spoke on the eve of Sunday’s trip to Liverpool about the backing he has received from Jenkins. “The chairman has been extraordinarily supportive,” the Swansea manager said. “Trust is from top to bottom and something that is clear from him. He trusts how I work, he’s seen the success. What I bring to the club has worked in the past and he knows that we can get through this period if we’re all united. He’s given me his full backing.”
But is everyone united? Pep Clotet, Monk’s assistant, continues to be linked with the Brentford job and it is understood that there is a mixture of frustration and disappointment at board level with how that situation has unfolded. Monk remains loyal to Clotet and insists his No2 is totally committed to Swansea but the impression lingers that others at the club would not be too bothered if the Spaniard departed.
On the pitch there has been plenty of effort but not nearly enough quality. Key players have lost form, including Ashley Williams, the captain, and Bafétimbi Gomis, who has gone 701 minutes without a goal. Jefferson Montero, who started the season like a house on fire, has fizzled out, and Gylfi Sigurdsson has shown only flashes of brilliance.
Williams was the only one of that quartet to start against Bournemouth last Saturday, when Swansea fought back from 2-0 down to salvage a point, but it was a strange game. Bournemouth played like the home side. Eddie Howe’s team had 56% of possession and pressed high up the pitch, committing three attacking players against Swansea’s four-man defence, and it takes a brave side to play out from the back in that situation.
Confidence, however, is fragile at Swansea and that manifests itself far more openly in a team that, to use football parlance, like to get it down and play rather than hit the channels and turn opponents around. When a player is a misplaced pass away from a groan – and that is a reflection of the inevitable situation that Swansea find themselves in rather than a criticism of the fans – it is much easier to avoid taking the ball in the first place. Once that starts to happen the whole philosophy unravels.
Not that Swansea are playing the same brand of Welsh tiki-taka that they became synonymous with in their first season in the Premier League. There has been a subtle shift over time, to the point that some players feel Swansea risk losing some of their identity. Statistics support that theory to a degree – Swansea are making 60-70 fewer passes per game than they did a couple of years ago and having a smaller share of possession.
Yet the flip side is that when Swansea secured their highest ever Premier League finish last season, it was achieved on the back of their lowest number of passes per game since winning promotion in 2011 and an average possession figure which, for the first time, dropped below 50%.
Not that formations, philosophies and tactics matter much at the moment. Monk has not become a bad manager overnight but he needs a win, no matter how it comes. “It’s just getting that one result, that one performance,” he said. “Footballers are very strange creatures sometimes. A result can relieve a whole cloud, even though the cloud might be elsewhere. It’s there for them and they know they can do it. It’s about going out there unified and putting their quality on the pitch.”
