Swansea City travel to Lancashire today with a number of players unavailable for selection. Kyle Joseph won’t play this weekend as he is in Gloucestershire finalising his loan to Cheltenham Town. Korey Smith and Liam Walsh are also still out, but the good news is Connor Roberts is around two weeks away from upping his training regime. Swans fans could see him back by mid to late September.

Drastic measures have been taken at the club with their Fairwood training facility being the subject of a ‘deep clean’ and unavailable for Martin and his training team to deliver their in depth sessions indoors. And on that point, Ben Cabango and Flynn Downes are unavailable as well due to Covid recovery, lessening selections by six. The players out at the moment are a big loss to the swans who will hope that once the Covid measures are applied at Fairwood, and the international break kicks in they will see the back of recent squad losses.

News will travel fast this weekend with Russell Martin determined to bring in two players to his squad. These new signings look likely to be genuine Russell Martin targets as opposed to recent signings like Liam Walsh. With a well won victory last weekend at Bristol City, and four more goals against Plymouth Arglye the swans will be confident going into the game at Deepdale.

Jamie Paterson and Matt Grimes will return and start the game, the second time the swans have been in Lancashire already this season. Speaking about Saturdays game Martin said, “We obviously have Bennett and Naughton back,” said the Swans head coach. “Paterson and Grimes will be involved on Saturday as they were just rested as a precaution in midweek after playing a lot of minutes. “So, they will be fine, we are just waiting for Flynn and Ben to come back although they won’t be quite ready for the weekend, but we look forward to working with them soon when they are back, “Korey and Liam are not far away, and Connor is not far away either.”

The league is the only thing in Preston manager Frank McAvoy's thoughts right now, and the lillywhites have a good record on home soil ahead of the visit of Swansea. PNE have won three of their last four league games at Deepdale, after winning just one of the previous ten. A win against the swans would likely lift Preston into the top half of the Championship. Preston’s Sean Maguire is confident his side can carry in their good form.” I thought performances up to this stage actually haven’t been that bad. But especially against Peterborough on Saturday with the number of chances we created, I think the 1-0 scoreline flattered Peterborough. I thought we created over a dozen good half chances, and we could have walked away with the game being four or five-nil, and we followed that up again on Tuesday”

PNE will be a tough test for Russell Martin’s passing tactical game, pressing from the front has been Swansea City’s opponents most lethal weapon since the season started. Forced errors at the back have been common place, but slowly over the last seven days or so clear headway seems to have been made.

Preston North End v Swansea City kicks off at 3pm tomorrow at Deepdale. It is available to watch LIVE on Swans TV for a fee. Check out the official site.

Join us from Monday morning for the transfer deadline race on Swansea Independent

Photographs licensed from Reuters

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