The 2022/2023 Championship season is in its infancy still but already, Swansea City are developing an unwanted reputation for conceding late goals.
Indeed, as of mid-September, the Swans have dropped five points owing to goals being scored against them after 90 minutes.
As things stand, Russell Martin’s men would be in the top six had they held onto the leads they had but instead, they find themselves in the Championship’s relegation places. Most recently, it was a 94th-minute Sheffield United winner that set the Swans back.
Interestingly, Russell Martin said that his side deserved a point at the very least from the clash with the high-flying Blades.
The Swansea boss may be right in his assessment but the reality is that his side also conceded a stoppage-time equalizer to Stoke at the start of September.
Evidently, you can see that this concerning trend has the potential to do significant harm to Swansea’s season if it isn’t rectified.
With this in mind, why are Swansea suffering from this crippling phenomenon, and what are the possible solutions to ensure it stops happening?
Fitness
Fitness and stamina is the obvious place to start given that they are the easiest dots to connect when first assessing why a team concedes after 90 minutes.
In Swansea City’s case, they have a manager in Russell Martin who is renowned for his possession-based style that the club have, admittedly, earned an admirable reputation for.
Yes, Martin follows in the footsteps of previous Swansea managers such as Roberto Martinez, Brendan Rodgers, Michael Laudrup, and Graham Potter who all insisted on keeping the ball and wearing the opposition down.
Encouragingly, Martin is proving an able successor at carrying on the Swansea blueprint when you consider that after the first eight games of this season, the Swans averaged 61.5 percent possession.
On top of that, the Jacks rank first in the Championship for the most passes forward, the most successful passes into the attacking third, and the most successful passes into the opposition half.
Crucially, Martin’s men appear to work just as hard without the ball as they rank seventh for the lowest expected goals against per 90 minutes whilst coming in at number five in the Championship for the lowest number of total shots faced per 90 minutes.
Of course, these are hugely impressive stats and speak of Martin’s undeniable managerial acumen on the training pitch but in the quest to solve the Swans’ current Achilles heel of conceding late on, they do also provide some clues.
Indeed, the numbers tell us in no uncertain terms that Swansea are an incredibly hardworking team, both with and without the ball.
However, there does seem to be a price for this exertion with the speculation being that they are mentally and physically drained during the last ten minutes of a game, thus opening the door for the opposition to pounce.
As for a solution, it’s an old-school one; the players have to run more during training in order to up their reserves.
Could the Swansea boss take a leaf from Bielsa’s book?
Granted, the temptation is to laugh this idea off for being overly simplistic but if we were to look at Marcelo Bielsa’s Championship-winning team in 2020, we would see that Leeds United would invariably run more in the closing stages of a game and therefore score crucial goals that led to promotion.
Essentially, none of these last-gasp heroics would have been possible without a lung-busting effort from the players during training.
In fact, Swansea fans don’t need a reminder of how fit Leeds were after Pablo Hernandez scored an 89th-minute winner in southwest Wales in 2020 to virtually guarantee Leeds’ promotion.
The inescapable truth is that over two years on from that goal and Leeds are well established in the Barclays Premier League thanks to Bielsa’s uncompromising approach to training. Indeed, the latest betting on football prices the Whites, as of the 15th of September, at just 5/2 to finish in the top half of the world’s most competitive league. In short, the foundations and work ethic which the Argentine insisted upon are still paying dividends for Leeds.
Now, does this mean Martin has to adopt the infamous murderball or have a running track installed around the pitch of Swansea’s Fairwood training centre like Bielsa did at Thorp Arch? Certainly not, but the 36-year-old must find his own way to ensure that his players go through the gears during the final stages of a game instead of slowing down.
It should be stressed that Martin’s footballing philosophy and blueprint are certainly good enough to see the Jacks promoted but the focus now needs to be on continuing those high standards in the last quarter of the game.
Should this current team find a way to do that then this season can still be salvaged.
Featured Image Credit: Swansea City Football Club