LLORENTE UNLIKELY TO FACE SPURS
Swansea City’s goalless stalemate with Middlesbrough was an exercise in frustration as the Welsh club toiled in search of a goal that never came against the obdurate Teessiders.
It leaves the Swans just a point above the drop zone heading into Tottenham’s visit to the Liberty tonight.
Without top scorer Fernando Llorente, Swansea drew a blank on Sunday, with Jordan Ayew unable to offer the same aerial presence as the Spaniard. Yet crosses were consistently delivered into the danger area as though Llorente were playing.
If Swansea are to continue to employ such tactics, and Llorente fails to recover from an ankle injury in time to face Spurs, head coach Paul Clement will have a key decision to make when he assesses his forward options.
Here we take a look at the runners and riders... Borja Baston The 24-year-old became Swansea City’s club-record signing when he joined from Atletico Madrid in a £15.5million deal last summer.
But he has had a season to forget. Not helped by arriving with an injury and picking up further problems early in the season, he soon fell behind Llorente in the pecking order and has rarely threatened to take back the jersey since. He has just one goal from his 17 appearances this term and a sign of just how he had fallen came with Clement’s decision to bring Ayew on for Llorente at Hull, and then start the Ghanaian against Boro.
No-one would deny Borja has been an underwhelming acquisition thus far, but his goalscoring record suggests there is a capable striker in there somewhere given some game time to find form and fitness.
Of course, in a relegation battle, handing out game time has not been a luxury available to Clement, but it was a surprise he did not send for forward reinforcements during the closing stages against Boro.
It is also worth pointing out that while Swansea delivered countless high crosses towards a 5ft 11in striker on Sunday, Borja stands at 6ft 3in and would appear physically to be a better fit for such an approach.
Height doesn’t necessarily make a player a good header of the ball — Tim Cahill showed all too well that shorter players can be effective aerially — but Ayew looked ill at ease when the ball was played towards him in the air. Oliver McBurnie The majority of his goals have come for the title-winning under-23s, but Oli McBurnie is the man in form when it comes to goalscoring.
The Scotland Under-21 international is through the 20-goal barrier for the season and is brimming with confidence, as shown by the stunning volley he scored against Wolves recently.
He remains raw in some areas of his game, but he has an uncanny knack of being in the right place at the right time to find the back of the net.
He has had a handful of Premier League chances off the bench but is hungry for more.
Clement has seen him in action on several occasions recently and been impressed, but has also spoken of the difficulty of throwing young players into the white heat of a relegation tussle. Standing at 6ft 2in, McBurnie is not afraid of the physical side of the game, and is a powerful header of the ball. Could it be time to give him his first start? Jordan Ayew When Ayew arrived as part of the deal taking Neil Taylor to Aston Villa, he was expected to primarily be used to bolster Swansea’s wide resources.
However, two of his four appearances to date have seen him employed through the middle as a striker and, being totally honest, he has looked uncomfortable there.
When Swansea have played on the deck he has been lively. He has dropped deep to link play and there were a few decent forward surges against Middlesbrough.
But there was a sense he was not going to be the man to break the deadlock, and at no stage was he ever one on one with the keeper or in a position to meaningfully meet any of the nearly 50 crosses flung into the box at the Liberty.
If he is to remain through the middle, Swansea’s game-plan has to change. If they are to continue to play in a similar manner to when Llorente is up front, Borja or McBurnie would appear a better bet. Gylfi Sigurdsson Take Llorente out of the equation and Sigurdsson is Swansea’s top scorer this season with eight goals to his name. He has operated as a striker previously this season and there is no doubting he is Swansea’s greatest goal threat should Llorente be unavailable again.
Against Middlesbrough, as on other occasions this term, you felt Swansea were only going to score from a moment of magic by the Iceland international. The fear is that, when deployed up front, Swansea lose some of his effectiveness as their attacking fulcrum. Admittedly he is not being used in his favoured No. 10 spot either at the moment, but he is allowed to drift into those areas and get involved from his current position as an inverted winger on the left flank.
Move Sigurdsson up front and you negate his creative influence and others would need to step up to find ways to unlock defences in open play.
All things considered, the only move he should be making is to his No. 10 role, with out-and-out wingers either side of him.