Swansea City take on Sheffield Wednesday this afternoon in what has been a desperate first seven games of the season for both clubs. With no wins between them today something surely has to five when they meet at the Swansea.Com Stadium at 3pm.
There is plenty of hope for Sheffield Wednesday fans, reports on recent games have certainly been positive for periods, and head coach forty three year old Xisco Munoz ( below ) isn’t feeling the pressure just yet. However, the fans are and are losing confidence as a result of his start at the club. He scored sixty two goals in ninety eight games for Georgian side Dinamo Tbilisi in the Erovnuli Liga leaving them in 2014. He became the clubs manager in August 2020 with a seventy two percent win record until December of that year when Watford headhunted him. After thirty eight games and a nearly a sixty percent win record the club sacked him. Since then he has led Huesca in Spain and Anorthosis Famagusta in Cyprus with little success. Six jobs in less than six years doesn’t look good on his CV, however the Watford sacking seemed odd at the time as he had led them to the Premier League.
Appointed in July after Darren Moore oddly left the Owls after leading them to promotion to the Championship he is described as a cool customer tactically. He brought in his brother Miguel as assistant, Roberto Cuesta as first-team coach and Antonello Brambilla as goalkeeper coach, all of who he worked with at Watford. When he joined Wednesday he said, "One of the things that is important to start building is a resistance. It means we can play 4-3-3, we can play 3-5-2 and 4-4-2. One of the things important for our team is a chameleon situation. It’s about capacity, and we will see how we can arrive at the situation. One of the things about this is we are an aggressive team in attack, and we need to press and take responsibility in that last part of the pitch. Sometimes games in the Championship are like five mini-games, and you can change with players from the bench. This is what we’re trying to improve and build on.”
Well, to date that hasn’t worked as much as Michael Duff hasn’t achieved at the Swans.
Sheffield Wednesday have sold out their allocation for this game and despite pressure to do so Munoz has resisted including Bailey Cadamarteri - a goal machine in the under 21 side in his current match day squad. Josh Windass is a doubt, Michael Duff will remember him from the League One play off final at Wembley in May. He scored the winner with seconds to spare in injury time to keep Barnsley in League One. We’ve also heard that Dominic Iorfa is highly doubtful after an injury at Ipswich Town. The Swans have Kyle Naughton, Joe Allen and Liam Walsh definitely unfit to play and Ollie Cooper is suspended after a second yellow at QPR on Tuesday night. Liam Cullen and Josh Key face fitness tests at 11am this morning.
It’s a biggie all right, it may well be at the wrong end of the table but you get the feeling there could be some itchy trigger fingers on either managers trap door if they come away from this without the plaudits. It’s getting close for both and really only a win will do.