The visitors to the Swansea.Com this Saturday are Derby County, a team who a month ago looked down and out and ready to return to League One. Now with four wins on the bounce they come looking to West Wales for more points, and more hope to avoid relegation.

Their main scrap seemed to be with Cardiff City who two years ago avoided relegation to League One when Reading were deducted points, Cardiff avoided the drop. Now with them in the bottom three this week and Derby clawing in teams right up to fourteenth place in the Championship all has changed. Just seven points between Cardiff in the best relegation place and Preston North End who lost to Derby (2-0) last night. Preston as you can see are heading the escape pack in fourteenth.

The Swans have two home games ahead of them, first Derby County this Saturday (3pm) and the following Wednesday another fixture (7:45pm) This time relegation threatened side Plymouth Argyle who are pretty much looking for anything to rekindle some hope of getting out of the mire. As we reported before the match last Saturday - when no harm could be done to Alan Sheehan’s plans, there is currently talk of two changes to the match day eleven. That’s if we discover any formation pre match, it will be witheld of course. It was spot on last Saturday away at Leeds, but as we always say, nobody gets hung out to dry on these pages.

Alan Sheehan was with Richard Stearman at the U21 game this week at the Swansea.Com and we are certain he would have been very impressed by what he saw. A 2-0 win against Burnley, and it could have been so much more was the result. Josh Ginnelly played and could have bagged a few himself. We have a comprehensive look at our loan players in a report early next week, and on this game later today there will be more news.

Artwork by Swansea Independent