Swansea City go into a midweek fixture tomorrow night at home to Nottingham Forest in the League Cup. Head Coach, Alan Sheehan must have learned something from the late goal against Hull City on Saturday, or at least we should hope so.

As we reported on Monday Sheehan will most certainly be looking to Adam Idah, Samuels-Smith, Manuel Benson, Andrew Fisher and Melker Widell as starters. That gives the likes of Ronald, possibly Franco and Josh Tymon a spot on the bench but he does also have Eom who is looking like he needs minutes to gain more confidence. If Sheehan decides to go with Idah he has Vipotnik (below) on the bench as back up. He is currently in a rich vein of form.

Forest and the money involved.

⚽️ That’s here —> The money on offer

⚽️ Sheehan : It’s a very competitive game, a cup game, we’ve won two games to get here, so yes, we want to win three games in the cup. We want to be able to get to a place, because the intensity, how we train has been excellent it really has. We are nowhere to where we want to be but we are on the right trajectory. There’s no point in looking backwards though.

⚽️ Ange Postecoglou : (Forest Head Coach) : It’s an important game, obviously last week was an unusual week with players flying in from all over the world (as did the Swans ) it all felt a bit rushed. It all feels a a lot more calm and controlled, so yes I’m looking forward to it. It’s a perfect opportunity to get them out there, get them playing (new players) at the same time get some match fitness into them. We want to win for sure we know with Europe this year the sheer number of games we are playing we are going to need the whole squad. The last two days have been good in trying to get the players understanding the routines we’ll have going into games in terms of training sessions, meetings and the preparation we’ll be doing.”

James McAtee, Omari Hutchinson, Oleksandr Zinchenko and Arnaud Kalimuendo Are all summer signings who will be expecting an appearance tomorrow night.

Having had a four points deduction in 2024 which saw the clubs owner, Evangelos Marinakis furious with that decision, speculation now is with their spending this and last summer - could move them into a similar situation. ‘Nottingham Forest News’ report, “Combined with minimal deductions for ‘good’ expenditure, that leaves them a fair way shy of the three-year €60m loss limit. The Athletic projects their football earnings loss could be closer to double that. As with Newcastle, our projection is that a financial penalty looms.”

Forest fans on their ‘Forest Focus podcast’ are stating that the Swans are exceeding expectations and with home draws against Hull City and Watford and wins against both Sheffield clubs you could question their lack of insight into the ‘quiet revolution’ in west Wales. Forest expect some of their new signings to feature especially those who haven’t played since being recruited this summer, so changes will be expected. The same podcast, an informative fans view, also stated that appointing Sheehan as a manager is a cardinal sin no matter how well he did in a caretaker role. They didn’t seem too impressed with the Swans start to the season, citing not much of a goal threat, third fewest shots in the league, second lowest XG and only Ronald and Vipotnik on the scoresheet in the league. There was also mention that the Swans are not expected to be challenging for promotion this season calling them ‘mid table Championship fodder’

Other perspectives are available. Especially when investigating the previous side that Zân Vipotnik played for before coming to Swansea. However, as a Premier League outfit you would expect them to be confident of a victory even with a few different players involved. That of course will also be the case for the Swans. They will need to be on their game with an effective Andrew Fisher without any mistakes for this one.

More tomorrow on the big game and the chance for a fourth round tie for the Swans

Artwork by Swansea Independent

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