It’s match day already and tonight Swansea City take on Portsmouth at home in the Championship. (7:45pm) It’s the follow up to that crucial fixture won on Saturday (2-0) against Oxford United, and this is a real six pointer.
We’ve had a look at Pompey already on Sunday but there’s more to add this morning.
That’s below.
⚽️ Swans must go for two in a row
Before we set off on today’s game we did cover a report on Brett Cravatt visiting the club over the weekend. We had literally thousands of views and of you haven’t read it, that is also below.
Portsmouth do have a few concerns already before kick off. Last week Adrian Segečić, Jordan Williams, Josh Knight, Regan Poole and Ashton Sizer (bench) all found themselves out of favour away at Charlton Athletic. Despite the game ending after twelve minutes that is an insight into the mind of head coach, John Mousinho. Conor Chaplin also replaced Colby Bishop so trying to get a handle on selections for this evening is difficult. It sounded a bit like John Mousinho and his assistant Jon Harley had a brainstorm and threw their crayons at the board. However, seventeen year old Ashton Sizer is well respected by his boss, "If he was needed to feature in the Charlton game, we would have been happy to stick him on from the bench, but obviously that wasn’t the case with the match abandoned”
There’s also a sense of do or die to this weeks Pompey fixtures. Mousinho explains, "I know it sounds a bit cliched, but we just needed to put some pride back into our performances and find that consistency. I saw signs of that, albeit it was for ten minutes or so. We got back into the changing room after the game was stopped and the players were raring to go. We chatted about how we started the game against a side who’d had a lot of joy here this season. That may not have been recently, but they have a really strong record here.”
So Swans head coach, Vitor Matos seems to be facing a side tonight who will come out of the blocks for the win, or at least not to lose. The Swans we expect to be relatively unchanged from Saturday, That’s just going by the ‘never change a winning side’ adage. We suspect that what he saw on Saturday, especially from Eom,Tymon and Galbraith and possibly Ronald will influence a similar selection. As Josh Tymon said post match on Saturday, "It's a massive win, with the expectations that we set out for this season, and how we started this season, we've found ourselves in a difficult place. Today, everyone collectively - not just us as players, but the fans as well - got behind us, and we really needed that. Everyone is on board with his vision, the gaffer has a clear idea of what he wants to do. There's no shortcuts with him, all the lads are buying into his vision.”
In the FA Cup Portsmouth have drawn Arsenal at home and the Swans have West Bromwich Albion, also at home. There was a decent attendance on Saturday, and the hope is the Swans will get close to that tonight. There’s tickets available in the south stand, around a few hundred and the same in the East and West. Matos talks to the press and confirmed teams later.