Swansea united, not divided

Posted by maxhicks

A certain British newspaper recently ran an article that suggested a player revolt was in the offing at the Liberty Stadium, but any idea of a mutiny on the good ship Swansea is ridiculous.

For a start, none of the proposed reasons for player unrest make very much sense. Apparently, the players are unhappy with Laudrup's new tactics... only Laudrup hasn't changed the way Swansea play in any grand sense. In fact, the only obvious changes the Dane has made have been positive corrections of shortcomings from last season.

Where the Swans were once ponderous, they are now incisive. The wingers have been asked to come inside to overload the centre of the park. The full backs have been allowed to get further forward to provide width. The result of all this has been more goals and greatly enhanced attacking threat.

Apparently, Laudrup is asking his Swans to play more long passes, which is squandering possession. Not only has this not actually been the case over the first few games of the season, it also seem ludicrous given Laudrup was the centre-piece of the Danish short-passing machine of the 1980's. If anyone knows the virtue of short passing, it is Laudrup. The afore-mentioned inverted wingers are instructed to play as such specifically to aid short passing. And if there is an occasional long pass, it is only to keep the opposition honest and avoid the Swans becoming predictable - another shortcoming of last season.

The players are apparently unhappy that Laudrup doesn't focus enough on fitness training. The time the Swans players should have been worried about lack of fitness was last season, where up until Christmas the side looked leggy over the last 20 or 30 minutes of pretty much every game. This season, the Swans have actually performed better in the second halves of matches than the first. Besides, does a professional athlete really need to be told to keep fit? As reasons for revolt go, this one seems pretty tame.

I appreciate some of the players might miss Brendan Rodgers on a personal level, but I can't figure out which Swans players are meant to be so unhappy. Perhaps Michel Vorm, who recently signed a four year contract to stay with team? Or Leon Britton, who has just played his 400th game with the side and spoke openly about wanting to reach 500? How about Ash Williams, the central defender whose Swans performances have just seen him named captain of the Welsh national side? Or any one of Michu, Chico, Pablo, Jonathan de Guzman and Ki Sung-Yueng -- all players brought to Swansea by Laudrup himself. Are they unhappy somehow to be playing Premier League football now? How much do they miss Brendan Rodgers?

The idea of any great unrest in the Swans locker room is fallacy. The only players with anything to gripe about are the squad players who want first team football and aren't getting it. However, Laudrup has not dropped a single first team starter from last season to accommodate his new signings; the new players were largely brought in to cover players who had been sold or had been on loan. Which poses the question - if certain squad players couldn't break last season's Championship-fresh side, can they realistically expect to break into an improved, Premier League-seasoned Swans side? And that's to say nothing of the fact Laudrup gave every player adequate pre-season playing time to prove their worth in the first place - before making all those transfers.

All this talk is little more than the latest slice of manufactured drama based on the Swans' less than impressive recent results, when those results were actually easily explained. Minor injury crisis? Yes. Deceptively tough opposition? Yes. Lucky goals and excellence from Alex McCarthy? Absolutely. Mutiny? No chance.

The Swans are a team's team, with a cast-iron philosophy and personnel who buy into that philosophy. It is impossible to play the Swansea way under any other circumstances, and on the evidence of the sublime football the Swans offered up last Saturday, the only unrest ought to be in the locker rooms of the Swans' next opponents.

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