Britton draws positives from making point
WHEN the new broom arrives, there’s going to be a little less mess to clean up. A pigsty, yes, but not quite as filthy as it was.
A draw at home against Crystal Palace might not seem like a great deal for Swansea because it isn’t. But when you are falling towards the Championship at such a mindscrambling pace, anything other than defeat feels like a gift wrapped in a big shiny bow.
The fact that this point came courtesy of a late equaliser, and a screamer from Jordan Ayew to boot, means there might also be some semblance of morale in the squad over Christmas now. For that, the new manager, whoever he may be, ought to be grateful.
Credit, therefore, to caretaker Leon Britton and his team of Cameron Toshack, Gary Richards and Tony Roberts. They stopped some of the bleeding and lifted some eyes off the floor.
They also got the team playing. Not enough to get excited about, but after the negative tactics and results of Paul Clement, this was a little more traditional for the club, with an attempt to dominate possession. They still struggled terribly with creating good chances and that is an issue that badly needs addressing in January.
But across two thirds of the field they looked improved, as was their collective attitude, which, again, has to be seen as positive for a side that lost eight of their previous 10 league games. Indeed, after falling behind to a Luka Milivojevic penalty early in the second half, rather than wilt as they usually do, they found their way back and salvaged their first point of the season from a losing position.
Britton remains in the dark over whether he will still be in charge for the Boxing Day clash at Liverpool, with Frank de Boer, Slaven Bilic and Aitor Karanka in the frame for the position fulltime. But as a first stab at management, he was satisfied with how it went, especially as his first ever substitution – Ayew for Luciano Narsingh – made such an impact.
‘The worked out, didn’t it?’ he said. ‘Overall, I am happy today. I’m very proud for the efforts they gave, not just today but over the last few days in difficult circumstances.
‘At home it’s been difficult when we’ve gone behind but the fans were behind the players even when we conceded, they kept going and we got the reward with a fantastic goal.
‘We kept pushing and it wasn’t as if we settled for a point.’
Time will tell if it is a result that can contribute to a transformation because this is a club in desperate trouble, not just on the pitch but also off it, with the crowd deeply unhappy with the ownership. But results can cover up many problems in football, and to that end Palace have to be an inspiration for Swansea, given they were bottom and are now on an eight-game unbeaten run under Roy Hodgson.
Hodgson said: ‘We needed big performances to get on an even keel, and that’s what we’ve done in the last two or three months.’
There must be a frustration for the Palace manager that his talented frontline could not make more of their first half here, even in the absence of the suspended Christian Benteke.
Their only goal came from Milivojevic’s penalty, awarded after Federico Fernandez tripped Ruben Loftus-Cheek.
Hodgson added: ‘I expected it to take a lot longer to get ourselves into contention with other teams in the league but we know there’s an awful long way to go and it’s going to be a fight for every point until the end of the season.’
Currently it is a fight they are winning.