Date: Saturday 15th December, 2018
Venue: Liberty Stadium, Swansea
Attendance: 18,692
by Editor & Adam Evans
SWANSEA City battled the elements as well as going a goal behind to overcome Sheffield Wednesday in an entertaining encounter at the Liberty Stadium.
Torrential rain and howling winds were the order of the day in SA1, as the Swans looked to deliver an early seasonal gift to their fans in the form of three points.
They did it thanks to goals from ‘super sub’ Bersant Celina and recently recalled Wayne Routledge.
A second successive win puts Graham Potter’s men within four points of the play-off places.
Swansea had the first chance of the match in the 10th minute through Routledge – his low strike across goal went just wide of the post.
Two minutes later the Swans had a couple more chances to open up the scoring through an Oli McBurnie header and Routledge once again coming close.
Wednesday were near to breaking the deadlock on the 25th minute. Lucas Joao couldn’t make the most out of a scrappy situation in the box and fired his effort just wide.
Ten minutes before the break McBurnie came agonisingly close to giving Swansea the advantage, but the Scotsman just couldn’t get his boot onto a dangerous low zipping ball across the face of the ball.
Soon after, the Swansea collective deemed Nathan Dyer to have been fouled but he played to the whistle and let rip a strike that had Cameron Dawson scrambling with the shot just zipping past the post.
The second half was full of chances. The first came in the 55th minute from a long distance effort from Swans captain Leroy Fer. That was followed by Matt Grimes stinging the gloves of Dawson three minutes later.
The first goal came just past the hour mark, but it was the visitors that took the lead. Joe Rodon lacked concentration for one moment and gifted Marco Matias the opportunity to smash his shot past Erwin Mulder at the near post.
The Owls appeared to be on top, however, in the 71st minute Celina buried Connor Roberts’ low cross into the bottom left corner to level the score.
A minute later, Celina reversed his role for Swansea’s winner and turned into the provider. Routledge was on the end of the Kosovan’s through ball and slotted it underneath Dawson from a tight angle.
The Swans had a chance to add to their lead, McBurnie hitting the crossbar with a header in the closing stages from a Barrie McKay corner.
The result sees Swansea move up one position to 9th in the table and Wednesday remain in 18th, only five points adrift from the relegation zone.
Swansea manager Graham Potter was pleased to get the win in such difficult weather conditions.
“Fantastic for the players and the supporters. It was a pretty awful afternoon in terms of the weather and the support was great for us.
“Overall, in that type of afternoon, there’s going to be a couple of mistakes and maybe a little bit of the first goal was that. It got a bit nervy for five maybe 10 minutes, but I thought overall we deserved the victory.
“In the last couple of weeks we’ve called on a bit of experience to help us through and Nathan (Dyer) and particularly Wayne (Routledge) have been fantastic in their application to help the team and their attitude and it has helped the group.”
Meanwhile, Wednesday manager, Jos Luhukay, was furious at the nature of his side’s defeat.
“I am disappointed. It is totally frustrating that you give away a 1-0 lead in a couple of minutes. You don’t have the focus or the discipline to hold on.
“The first (Swansea) goal is not acceptable. I am so angry because there is no proof of what we are doing. It is not the first time we give a 1-0 lead away for the opponents to score two goals in five minutes.”
Swansea City: Erwin Mulder, Mike Van Der Hoorn (Cameron Carter-Vickers 45’), Leroy Fer (C), Oli McBurnie, Nathan Dyer (Jefferson Montero 63’), Wayne Routledge, Barrie McKay, Matt Grimes, Joe Rodin, Connor Roberts, Kyle Naughton (Bersant Celina 65’)
Sheffield Wednesday: Cameron Dawson, Morgan Fox (Steven Fletcher 79’), Josh Onomah (Marco Matias 45’), Joey Pelupessy, Jordan Thorniley, Tom Lees (C), Atdhe Nuhiu, Lucas Joao, Adam Reach, Ashley Baker, Daniel Pudil
