Swansea City Fan View: What we need to do to avoid the drop

With pace, fight and goals in abundance, I’m not sure which team played against Arsenal on Tuesday night at the Liberty Stadium – it wasn’t Swansea City.

Or rather, it wasn’t the Swansea City we’ve been watching all season.

To everyone’s surprise, this is the second ‘big team’ we’ve faced and the second we’ve outsmarted. We’ve walked away with consecutive victories, and we’ve thoroughly deserved them. Sure, Arsenal didn’t defend very well, but let that take nothing away from the fact that Swansea were playing with purpose once again.

This means we must come to the conclusion that – as they both had the same players at their disposal – either Paul Clement was a fraud or Carlos Carvalhal is a genius. I suspect it’s a little of both…

Carvalhal has seriously brought out the best in the majority of the players. As one of Sam Clucas’s biggest critics, I’ll happily admit that he played a sensational game on Tuesday, and scored two goals to cap off that memorable performance. Jordan Ayew too – he’s been temperamental over the past few months, but he’s starting to become consistently good.

Dare I say it, there’s a good feeling around the Liberty at the moment. And, now the Swans are off the bottom spot (at least temporarily), there’s a bit of hope that maybe relegation isn’t a dead cert.

It’s not all good news…

Despite all this improvement, there’s still some big gripes.

I write this article on January 31st – transfer deadline day. Incredibly, the club have somehow managed to make themselves weaker this transfer window. It could only happen to Swansea.

For example, Roque Mesa has gone to Sevilla. Fine – he wasn’t making history on the pitch (he didn’t get a chance), but with a tough survival fight ahead of us, we should have held onto him. What harm is he doing on the bench (apart from eating wages, which is probably the reason he’s gone…)

And sadly, the club have been very relaxed about the whole notion of strengthening.

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At the start of the month it seemed like we needed eleven new players. Now, with Carvalhal’s influence, perhaps we don’t need such an overhaul. But some depth is still required – we’re still lacking in all areas of the pitch. Take an injury or two, and things will start to look bleak again.

It seems screamingly obvious, but add some fresh talent to complement the revival of the current squad and WE WILL PROBABLY STAY UP!

Sorry to shout, but no-one seems to be listening otherwise.

We’ve heard some distracting rumours (Nicolas Gaitan, for example) throughout the month, but rumours don’t do it for me. Until someone is posing for a photo, holding up a Swans shirt, there’s no point in getting excited.

I just hope now that we’ve left it so ridiculously last-minute, we don’t end up scraping the barrel and nab some random keeper or a ‘promising’ youngster.

I think we’ll end up with something. Whether or not it’ll be what we need is another question altogether. Fingers crossed.