Swansea City 2 Newcastle United 2
Liberty Stadium… Saturday October 4th… 3pm
Attendance: 20,622
Ticket: £25 (Reciprocal Agreement) – Programme: £3
* Warning, the following report may contain traces of despondency and negativity.
Another Saturday, another long and expensive train journey. More importantly, another new ground…
The Liberty Stadium, a modern arena that conforms to the rules of most new builds. Frankie & Benny’s… Check… TGI Fridays… Check…. Neat and tidy, landscaping all round but lacking in character. Three of the stands look almost exactly the same (see pics), with only the fourth (the main West Stand) differing in design. I guess that character is something that develops over time; we’ll just have to wait and see. In its defence, maybe it’s a ground that’s been designed to work better from a distance, as it looked impressive from the train as I headed home…
Onto more mundane matters; Ashley was in attendance, overwhelming evidence of a white blimp in the director’s box…. And another shock, Pardew ventured into his technical area; I think most fans are so disillusioned that they can’t even be bothered to barrack him, goal achieved, spirit broken…
Liberty Stadium, Outside…
The match itself… Not a lot to say really, other than we were very lucky…
Swansea scored early through Bony, then they missed a sitter; moving forward a few minutes and Krul pulled off a fantastic save from Bony. Approaching half-time Swansea minds wandered, we equalised at the near post through Cisse…
Second half… 48 minutes, we conceded a soft goal to a grateful Wayne Routledge and certainly didn’t look like offering anything up front. More concerted pressure followed, Krul pulled off another world class save. On came Sammy and Riviere; Sammy looking convincing for once, he crossed, Cisse scored, 2-2…
The game could have gone either way in the latter stages, our confidence raised by the unlikely turn of events but a Newcastle win would have been more than a little embarrassing…
To summarise; the point doesn’t paper over the cracks, this was another awful performance; Swansea must still be wondering how they managed to throw away two points from a game in which they created enough chances to win several times over…
And while I remember, the new third kit, even without the ‘W***a’ logo it’s one of our worst, and we’ve had some bad ones…
Liberty Stadium, Inside…
So I headed home, well back to the Midlands. The train I took from Bristol to Birmingham was heading for Manchester Piccadilly, as the doors opened at New Street I was greeted by a sea of Manchester City fans fresh from another win…
It made me think, hypothetically, would I rather that my club was run like Manchester City or Swansea City? The honest answer, Swansea every time; sustainable growth from a club with a heart. We’ve tried it the other way, it’s not viable in the long term and you lose sight of the things that matter. But neither is a choice that we currently have, Mike Ashley has seen to that…
It almost took my mind off how bad we were today but not quite…
Swansea; Fabianski, Richards, Fernández, Williams, Taylor, Ki Sung-yueng, Shelvey (YC), Dyer (Montero 86), Sigurdsson (Emnes 86), Routledge, Bony Not Used; Carroll, Gomis, Tremmel, Bartley, Shephard
Goals; Bony (17), Routledge (50)
Newcastle United; Krul, Janmaat (YC), Williamson, Coloccini (YC), Dummett, Obertan, Tioté, Sissoko (YC), Colback (Riviere 69), Gouffran (Ameobi 58), Cissé (Pérez Gutiérrez 85) Not Used; Anita, Haidara, Cabella, Elliot
Goals; Cisse (43, 75)
As usual, More pictures on flickr…
