Swansea City fans will be hoping Chuba Akpom needs a rest this weekend, the Middlesbrough striker has twenty one goals to his name this season, the best campaign of his career. His goal return has been nothing short of incredible as has been Michael Carrick’s management journey to date.

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Not only that Middlesbrough are the form side in the championship, top of the league over the past twelve games with a resounding return of ten wins and two losses. And they are the Swans next opponents.

Akpom has even missed a number of games this season, his scoring record would be far higher if he had featured in all of them. He isn’t the only threat but Russell Martin really does need to take notice of the type of goals Akpom scores and the threat he poses to the Swans central defence. Thirty of his career goals have been game winners and this season he has scored every type of goal with both feet, headers and penalty’s. He is over 6’ and has explosive pace over short distances. Ben Cabango and Nathan Wood will have their work cut out, but they are the best the Swans have to negate Akpom’s threat.

Middlesbrough’s season is a frightening statistic, a form team with a sold out away support coming to the Swansea.com stadium this Saturday is possibly the last thing Russell Martin wants. But it should be exactly what the Jack Army wants. A big game atmosphere, nothing to lose and everything to gain in a championship encounter that has all the ingredients for a superb game. Any Swans fan that can make it should be there, and of course circumstances will always dictate that, but if it’s possible it surely is a no brainer ? There’s no reason why not, it’s what following your team is all about.

There’s much that can go wrong for Swansea City on Saturday but they do need a vociferous Jack Army behind them, it makes all the difference. We need to see Swansea City on their home turf battling and displaying what they are all about to as many fans as possible. Martin is up against Michael Carrick who has a seventy percent win record for his twenty Boro games in charge. That’s a lot for any novice manager. If only that could happen in every instance. Carrick’s coaching philosophy has been described as similar to Jose Mourinho, speaking last month Carrick said. “Seeing Jose close up and what he’d seen in players, how quickly he spotted strengths and weaknesses, he made up his mind very quickly and was very decisive tactically how he went about things. A terrific experience and it was a short point unfortunately with Jose in the end, things changed quite quickly”

It’s a huge test this Saturday but one that Swansea City have to take head on, it has every ingredient every true football fan wants in a football match, and the louder the voices the more chance surely of getting those three points.

Photographs licensed from Reuters

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