Swansea City head coach has confirmed that a decision from the home office will be in place by the time the Swans meet Wrexham at the swansea.com a week today.
He sounded a lot more confident than he did when he last fielded questions on the progress of his three preferred coaches on Monday. The expectation then as we reported was they were to be in place at the club at the end of November. (24th) The club were aware there could be issues but appointed Matos in any event and brought in Leon Britton and Joe Allen to assist Vitor, Martyn Margetson and Kristian O’Leary in the meantime. The three coaches in waiting are Diogo Medeiros, Toze Mendes, and Goncalo Ricca, all three have been well documented on these pages. Matos on that subject commented yesterday afternoon, "It's always good when you can have the full support of your staff and to have an idea as well to improve the club in all departments. I think that's what we as a club decided to do as well. We're really pleased how it has been so far and we will make it in a better way I think."
With two wins behind him from Saturday and Tuesday with defeats of Oxford United and Portsmouth Matos seems quietly confident. He should be too, the Swans are a completely different team on the face of it since he took over. His two wins and two defeats have highlighted a big difference with what he describes as ‘a slow development and a new way of doing things’ Liam Cullen has also commented on the new head coach, "One thing the manager has been really strong on is making clear that we are going to need everyone, and everyone knows whatever the situation I will always do everything I can to try and help the team win. Obviously it’s a really nice feeling to come on and do that. (Score the winning goal against Portsmouth) We hope we can carry this momentum forward, we looked at these two home games as games we needed to go and win with the situation we were in. It has given us a benchmark to work towards and it can give us some confidence”
Matos himself remains calm in his press gatherings focussing on his side and the slow progression that won’t come overnight. "Of course, winning helps. But we know that we need to keep doing steps. We know that we need to keep improving and that there's still a lot of things to come still. So another step, another game, and in three days we play again." Nobody can expect an up immediate turnaround. "We need to improve. We know that we need to play better with the ball, especially and we need to take steps on that. First consistency on what we believe should be our principles. Having much more fluidity with ball possession. So we need to find this balance between being a pressing team, being a counter-pressing team, but at the same time know to use the timings and the tempo of the game with the ball.”
With a fully fit squad Matos can expect something from the game. As we explained yesterday though, it’s a harder, bigger and tougher test than Oxford and Portsmouth. These two sides were extremely poor and on their showing against the Swans really don’t deserve to be in the Championship.
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Again we are not expecting big changes to the squad, Manuel Benson is a few days away from meeting up with the Angola national side on Monday for the African Cup Of Nations which will take up to a month to conclude. As Matos confirmed there is no indication of any loan player returning to their parent club in January. We reported that yesterday morning in the report link above.
To all of the Swans fans making their way to the Potteries tomorrow morning we wish you safe travels. It’s a 12:30pm kick off. Dependent on what information we get we will report that later, otherwise see you on Saturday morning from 7am for match day on the Indy.
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