We looked in bad shape, but manager has inspired us on road to safety
LUKASZ Fabianski has spelled out just how fearful Swansea City’s players were of relegation after outlining the sorry state of things at the Liberty before Paul Clement’s arrival.
And the Swans’ No.1 insists noone should underestimate the impact made by Clement, who helped transform a team who were heading only one way before his New Year appointment as he detailed just how the former Real Madrid assistant sealed Swansea’s Great Escape.
Fabianski had been helpless as side after side lined up to humiliate Swansea as part of a sorry run which left the club at the bottom of the Premier League going into 2017.
The Poland international has since kept a string of clean sheets that helped seal safety with a week to go, the latest coming at Sunderland which set-up Sunday’s guaranteed survival.
Yet Fabianski knows that if it wasn’t for Clement then it could have been Swansea filling the role of the Black Cats, brushed aside by the Swans having already been relegated.
And, reflecting on a period where two managers had failed to address a Swansea slide into huge trouble, the 32-year-old stopper said: “You would have to say up until January, it was pretty bad. That was not just in terms of results but the way we performed. We were not losing games, but losing games by three goals. It was horrible both home and away. We looked in pretty bad shape before the manager arrived.
“We had been written off, but our situation was not the best and we faced a real battle to stay up. It could have quite easily have been us in Sunderland’s position.
“No-one would have predicted at this stage of the season we would find ourselves four points clear of Hull. It just shows you the corner we have turned since the manager came in.”
Swansea picked up eight wins under Clement, amassing 26 points in total, having been on only 12 from 19 games before he came in.
And, while headlines have been grabbed by recent performances from captain Leon Britton, assistking Gylfi Sigurdsson and top-scoring Fernando Llorente – whose opener was added to by Kyle Naughton at the Stadium of Light – Fabianski says it should be the manager who gets the praise for pulling off the great escape.
“He gave us confidence,” said the former Arsenal man. “He demands a lot of hard work on the training ground and his work ethic is pretty amazing. And he is always very well prepared when it comes to the tactical side of the game.
“You can clearly see why he has been at such massive clubs like Real Madrid. That has rubbed off on him. He has delivered all the right messages to us and we have responded on the pitch. You can see that by recent results out on the pitch since he took over.