Boss Martin laments growing pains of his young Swans side
RUSSELL Martin admits the body language of some of his Swansea City players prior to Birmingham City’s late equaliser in the meeting between the sides typified their side’s defensive struggles this season.
The Swans looked on course for all three points at St Andrew’s after goals from Olivier Ntcham and Matt Grimes put the visitors 2-1 up following Scott Hogan’s opener for the hosts.
But Troy Deeney netted in the final minute of regular time after Swansea failed to clear their lines from a setpiece as John Eustace’s men claimed a point.
“The journey you have with young players, we’re the youngest team in the league, so you have to expect a bit of pain.
“If we went behind last year very rarely did we get back into the game. That was part of the process last year, there were so many guys learning to play this way for the first time,” said Martin.
“The courage they have now to bounce back from tough moments, they’ve come so far in their journey.
“Now we have to improve that next bit, which is those moments of concentration and real desire to look around at each other.
“I didn’t like the body language before the goal and when we conceded the corner. I didn’t like it one bit. Too many looking at their own boots.
“That’s the moment when if you have a group of 28-year-old men, they look around at each other and scream at each other and get organised.
“That’ll come with our guys. It’ll only come when they experience the pain of moments like this.
“We have a three or four-week block of work after a little bit of time off after Saturday to really work on the stuff that’s hurting us, and as ever we have to find solutions to problems.”
Hogan’s 12th-minute header meant the Swans have now conceded the first goal in each of their last four games, with Martin’s men claiming just three of the 12 points on offer in that run.
And Martin admitted the Swans need the World Cup break to address the concerns that they have had in the opening 20 matches of the campaign.
“It hurts, it’s frustrating, it’s disappointing,” he said.
“We’ll get criticised because it’s something that’s hurt us a bit this season so far. For so long in the game the players were brilliant, brave and ran so hard for each other.
“This was always going to be a
tough game. Birmingham are on a great run of form. We started poorly, of course. I don’t know why. We spoke about it before the game. We tried to prepare the guys for it.
“I just think we’re really early still in the journey with so many young players and I’ll get criticised for saying the same thing. I don’t enjoy saying the same thing, I just said that to the players.
“I think they’re pretty annoyed that the same thing keeps happening. We’re always going to be honest with each other.
“Birmingham have had two shots on target and scored two goals. Steven [Benda] hasn’t had a save to make, we can’t keep conceding goals out of nowhere like that.
“We shouldn’t have given away a corner, that’s a moment of anxiety. It should get kicked out for a throw-in, take the ball or get fouled, but it goes out for a corner, so we put pressure on ourselves, and then Troy Deeney scores and his marker should do better.
“His marker had an incredible game. What more does he need me to tell him? He’s hurt us and he’s more gutted than anyone.
“We’ve got to stop conceding first. When we score first we’re very hard to play against.
“We’ve conceded too many sloppy goals recently and it’s hurt us, no doubt about it.
Despite conceding late on, Swansea are just one point adrift of the Championship’s top six ahead of Saturday’s trip to Huddersfield Town.
”We can win on Saturday and put ourselves in a brilliant position ahead of the break, and that’s got to be the aim,” he said.
“I love what we’re building and I love the journey we’re on.
“There’ll be people impatient and frustrated, of course.
“There’ll be people who don’t like the way we play, there’ll be people who don’t like me and there’ll be people who don’t like certain players. “It’s part and parcel of the game. “But what we have a real understanding of is the journey we’re on and how much room for growth there is with the players we have.”