It has been a long time coming – almost six months to be exact – but Tammy Abraham chose an opportune moment to remember what it feels like to score a Premier League goal as Swansea came from behind against the league’s bottom club to salvage a precious point that they scarcely deserved.
The last time that Abraham registered in the top flight was back in the middle of October, before he made his England debut, and it has turned into a slog of a season for the on-loan Chelsea striker since. Yet this was a goal to cherish for player and club as the 20-year-old ended his drought and edged Swansea four points clear of the drop zone.
The fact that Abraham’s header was Swansea’s only effort on target all afternoon says everything about their performance, which was reminiscent of their toils in the first half of the season. West Brom could and probably should have punished them by picking up only their second league victory since August, yet Jay Rodriguez’s opportunist goal early in the second half was cancelled out after Swansea beat Albion at their own game by scoring from a set piece.
The good news for Albion is that this point ended that dismal run of eight successive league defeats, with the departure of Alan Pardew on Monday and the presence of Darren Moore on the touchline lifting the mood inside a stadium that has witnessed more than its share of misery this season. The bad news is that a point is not nearly enough at this stage of the season, with Albion still marooned at the foot of the table.
Moore, who has been placed in charge in a caretaker capacity, saw the positives and said that he was “delighted to stop the rot”, and also pleased with the way that his players responded to Abraham’s goal 15 minutes from time. “The fans hopefully saw a West Brom team that set about to be positive in everything they did, on the front foot from the outset, and wanted to take the game to Swansea,” he said.
Swansea gave Albion a helping hand in that respect by sitting deep and doing little to try to capitalise on the fragile confidence among a group of players that are all but resigned to relegation. “It was not a good game,” Carlos Carvalhal, Swansea’s manager, said. “We expected to play the way we did after we conceded the goal – to press more, to be more dynamic. With the ball we must do better. When we conceded the goal it was like we were free.”
With four of their final six matches at home, Swansea are not in the worst position and Carvalhal is entitled to think that they will be a different proposition against Everton on Saturday, when Jordan Ayew, their leading scorer, is back from suspension. Yet it still felt alarming to see Swansea play with such caution here.
Albion were far from free-flowing themselves but they certainly carried the greater threat. Lukasz Fabianski repelled a 25-yard piledriver from Chris Brunt and the Swansea goalkeeper made an even better stop on the stroke of half-time, when he produced a one-handed stop to keep out a close-range shot from Rodriguez. Sandwiched between those two moments André Ayew should have scored when he ran onto a through ball from Sam Clucas, only to spear his left-footed shot narrowly wide with only Ben Foster to beat.
It was hard to see where the breakthrough would come from in a drab game but the goal arrived in the 54th minute and was simple in its execution. Matt Phillips crossed from the left, Salomón Rondón flicked the ball on and there was Rodriguez, ghosting in at the far post, to turn the ball home from no more than two yards out.
Swansea huffed and puffed in response but needed a set piece to bring parity. Brunt needlessly conceded a corner, Clucas delivered the ball from the right and Abraham, getting ahead of Jake Livermore, nodded beyond Foster. “Tammy’s progressing well,” said Carvalhal. “With the age that he is, to come to the Premier League is not easy.”
