BOURNEMOUTH 1 SWANSEA 0
IF YOU had offered any Swansea fan the chance of survival around Christmas time they would have bitten off your hand.
Right now, though, it looks like a calamity after Ryan Fraser’s first-half freekick stretched their latest dismal run to seven games without a win.
Even home games with fellow strugglers Southampton and then already-relegated Stoke don’t any longer look like get-out-of-jail cards for boss Carlos Carvalhal.
This is a team who have forgotten how to score – just two goals in that spell which could end up costing them so dearly.
It was the same story yesterday as they made more than enough chances to have got a point or even three at Bournemouth but instead got nothing.
Not that Carvalhal is worried. “We depend on ourselves,” he said. “When I arrived if I said we could play two games in the last week to stay up nobody would believe me because it was really bad.
“Now it is in our hands, we can do it, so let’s do it. My team play better at home, the fans can have a big impact, we believe we can stay up.
“I am not really worried about the lack of goals because we have players who can score even if they haven’t done so in the last few games.
“We’ve made chances, even against Chelsea and Everton when we deserved more than we got. I have faith in my players.”
That Swansea do have a last chance to escape is because Carvalhal (right) has set them up to be much tougher to beat and they have their last two games at home.
They clung on for the first 10 minutes here when they barely got out of their own half. Federico Fernandez, defying a knee injury to captain the side, made three great blocks and Bournemouth’s Marc Pugh had a goal correctly disallowed for offside.
From there the Swans began to get a toehold in the game, but when they made two good chances from a scramble after a corner, Asmir Begovic saved at close range from first Mike van der Hoorn then Nathan Dyer.
Alfie Mawson headed over from a corner and Martin Olsson also missed when Andre Ayew’s clever turn and cross set him up.
All those wasted chances were likely to be costly, and so it proved in the 37th minute when Mawson fouled Callum Wilson on the edge of the area. The Cherries thought