Swansea City travelled and stayed in the London area yesterday afternoon to take advantage of the extra time they will have before tonight’s championship game at Loftus Road, the home of Queens Park Rangers.
Jamie Paterson won’t feature for the swans tonight after talks yesterday with the Swansea City hierarchy. We are unsure of the outcome of those talks but with him not travelling it’s probable things are still not yet resolved. Russell Martin views yesterday and today as an ideal time for his playing squad to spend more time together after a disastrous December and January which was seriously affected by Covid and cancelled games.
With new players in the fold it also gives those new additions time to bond with their new team mates as the swans head to west London later for a 7.45pm kick off against high flying QPR. Despite a petulant display of behaviour by Michael Obafemi on Saturday when he wasn’t selected as a substitute for Joel Piroe, he has travelled.
Swansea City: Early indications are that Olivier Ntcham will have a mid morning assessment on a knock from Saturday which saw him substituted by new boy Hannes Wolf. Cyrus Christie is fit after his second game in a week, having played just one game all season for Fulham. Already it seems Russell Martin is very keen for Christie to continue his association with the swans come the summer. Speaking after the hard fought win against Preston Christie said. " I felt we thoroughly deserved this win and the clean sheet, I felt we defended well and we really limited the number of chances they had. We defended with our lives, they had one shot on target and we can now look forward to Tuesday. We have a lot of games in hand, and if we can win those games the table will look very different. Each game is a chance to get more confidence and once it clicks together we are going to be a very good team. The fans were right behind us, they can see what we are trying to do. The boys are comfortable in how we play and we are showing what we can do. When it clicks we know we are hard to play against, you talk to other teams and they will tell you it’s not easy and it’s hard to know what to do. We are showing it, I felt we could have won by more but I think that day and that game is coming.”
QPR: will assess the fitness of skipper Stefan Johansen ahead of the game after the Norwegian missed Saturday’s win over Coventry. Johansen sat out the 2-1 victory after picking up a minor knock in training last week. "We are going to check Stefan this morning to see if he’s fit. He had a small knock and we’ll assess him from there,” The fit-again Moses Odubajo is also likely to be pushing for a start, with Albert Adomah, who has started the last five matches, the most likely player to make way, with Warburton having one eye on keeping the 34-year-old fresh for Saturday’s match with Reading. Warburton said: "It is nice to see Moses back as he can cover left and right for us. We are focused on Swansea and then Reading. Then we have a bit of a break and it’s Peterborough in the FA Cup then the mayhem begins again when we have two games a week for the next three weeks. We have 23 guys in the squad who are all hungry to play and that’s what you want. We have a nice balance of younger boys and experienced heads and we are in a good place now.”
Russell Martin having left Paterson behind is again displaying the harder side of his management style and swans fans will like that a lot. He has been sympathetic to Paterson’s plight but again he has ensured we all see his actions, and they clearly do speak louder than many words.
Apart from that Russell Martin has a full strength side to choose from for what we believe will be the hardest away game so far this season.
Russell Martin update later.