Silent Swans

This is the first of 4 blogs I wrote last year about the football league Championship. Although they are outdated, i still thought they'd be worth posting, so here is the first:

Silent Swans

While some media darlings take all the limelight, Swansea glide by un-noticed in the Championship title race

33 games into the new Championship season, and it so appears that this campaign has, almost predictably, become just as unpredictable as any other. As the pre-season favourites, with the exception of Nottingham Forest, fell by the wayside in the months of August and September, usually enough, just 9 teams remain in the battle to win one of Europe’s tightest leagues.

            Perhaps, then, big spending Hull City and lowly placed Reading have left things a little too late for a genuine title challenge, given their point totals, and even Leicester City, despite their incredible run of form and their Premier League quality players may struggle to win the league. In fact, many teams at the right end of the table, above the aforementioned 3 are struggling for consistency. Those who believe everything they read will tell you that the ‘Mighty Leeds United’ and ‘Craig Bellamy’s Cardiff City’ are the biggest challengers to QPR’s seat atop the Football League. But delve deeper and you find a tiresome trio fighting for top spot that do not quite get the attention they deserve.

            Nottingham Forest have a decorated history – 2 European Cups under the guidance of Brian Clough speak for themselves, yet they have glided into fourth spot in the Championship this season with little notice. One of the pre-season favourites, they have built up a head of steam over the past couple of months and find themselves in with a shout of the top prize. Norwich City are also a team looking forwards, not behind them, as they attempt a second straight promotion under the watchful eye of Paul Lambert. The Canaries have succeeded impeccably when it comes to escaping the media’s attentions this season, even if their manager hasn’t.

            However, when it comes to staying under the radar, no team could boast more triumphantly at doing so than Swansea City Football Club. They say the table never lies, and if that were the case then no team is more of a threat to QPR than the Swans. Sitting pretty in second place, it is not a position that is unfamiliar to them, considering their last 6 months. Having occupied a play-off position for almost the entire campaign, the Jacks are now making their move, and the best thing for them is, no one seems to know about it. Nobody sees them a threat, nobody speaks particularly highly of their manager, and their players are hardly spoken of, nor, it appears, are the Premier League vultures circling around them. Yet, for all the anonymity that hangs around Swansea, they are doing magnificently well in a league that many would consider to be one step too far for a team that those outside the South Wales city don’t give a second thought to.

            Brendan Rogers has had varying degrees of success outside of Swansea.  Relatively new to the management game, he climbed out of the Chelsea youth setup straight into a managerial role at Watford in the 2008/09 season, where he successfully and effortlessly steered them away from relegation. Clearly not one to stay in the same place for long, he then jumped ship, but despite the saying ‘a captain always goes down with his vessel’, the Reading board decided that wasn’t to be the case, as they got rid of their main man before he swerved them into the shark infested sea that is League One (enough with the ship analogy now, I think).

            The club itself, however, were just a last day of the season win away from 6^th place last May. Marginally behind Blackpool going into game 46, the Swans could only manage a draw under the guidance of Paolo Sousa, meaning it would be the Tangerines entering the play-offs, not Swansea. For Blackpool, the rest, as they say, is history, but for Swansea, there were some problems. Firstly, they couldn’t score – throughout the whole of last season they managed just 40 goals. Secondly, their manager had just sailed off into the sunset (sorry, no more ocean analogies either, I promise), otherwise known as Leicester City.  This is the point where upon the club decided to join forces with Brendan Rogers.

            And so, here they are, 2^nd in the Championship, small and ignored, but don’t they just relish in it? They still find scoring a problem, but their defence is impeccable, having conceded just 6 goals at home all season, and with the pacey attacking prospects of Scott Sinclair, Nathan Dyer and Ashley Williams upfront, helped by January signing Luke Moore, they now have more than enough attacking quality to take the Championship title by the scruff of the neck and give it a good shake. So may the other 8 or so teams at the business end of the table ignore Swansea at their peril, or else ‘the Mighty Leeds United’ or ‘Craig Bellamy’s Cardiff City’ may well find themselves languishing in the lower leagues for yet another season, while li’l ol’ Swansea creep slowly up the Premier League table, proving along with Norwich and Fulham in Europe, Hull and Blackpool in the top tier, and Wimbledon in the F.A Cup, that there just isn’t such a thing as an underdog in football.