by Dylan Salt
Swansea City play Manchester City in the F.A. cup today, although the visitors have been in good form in the league and other competitions that are playing in, the swans, in good form themselves in the league and coming into this fixture after an absolute thrashing of another championship team in Nottingham forest are looking to ensure that this is a tough match for the premier league leaders as they will try to compete with their players, throughout the whole match in all areas of the pitch.
Swansea city’s manager, players and fans can take great solace as second-division side Bournemouth beat Burnley in a F.A. cup tie just yesterday and whilst this task is arguably a lot trickier, Swansea’s current boss, Steven Cooper has highlighted his intent prior to this match, stating that:
“The mentality that we are trying to set here is a competitive and a winning mentality. I don’t think that you can have a day off if you want to try and set that kind of standard.”
Before then talking about how he believes that setting high standards of belief and display on the pitch is important when readying for football matches in any competition, against teams of all types of abillity.
“Wednesday will be no different, it’s a tough challenge, but I’m not going to stand in front of the players everyday and talk about belief and raising the standards and then come to a game and down tools and see it as a free-hit, I think that would be wrong.”
The Swansea manager then added to his interview that, he will want his team to play with ambition and to play their own style of football, whilst firmly aware that there will likely be times throughout the match where his players won’t get a lot of the ball.
“When we do get opportunities to impose our game (on Manchester City), then we have to commit to it, otherwise there isn’t a point in having a way of playing!”
Whilst Swansea has the best defensive record in the championship at the moment, their opponents should also be aware of the attacking talents of Andre Ayew (who they might have important information about from his time as a premier league player) and also Jamal Lowe, both of who have been their top-goal scorers so far.
Jamal Lowe’s Interesting path to the top of professional football
Lowe, will have an insatiable amount of hunger when it comes to scoring against Manchester city, this is as his biggest ambition is to play in the premier league, which is largely fuelled by his pathway to being a Swansea player, a time where he incorporated a career in football, with a job as a P.E. teacher. He was at QPR as a youth player and whilst playing here, he was a very exciting prospect that was set to make an impact in their first-team at a very young-age as a winger, however, the rise of a player that he could be lining up against today, Raheem Sterling displaced him from this QPR team as well as his coaches thoughts.
He then joined Barnet to try and re-ignite his career in professional football, here he enjoyed some good playing time, before a very exciting opportunity arose, as Edgar Davids became their manager, yet with all of his abilities, quality and experience as a player, Davids didn’t want to have Lowe as part of his time at Barnet and not long into his tenure there, made it evident to Lowe that he wasn’t part of his plans.
Loan spells were next for Jamal Lowe, during this time he played for teams including Hayes & Yeading and Farnborough, before he then joined Hampton & Richmond borough, whilst playing here, he knew that his earnings that he was receiving as a non-league football player needed to be supplemented and therefore, when he was offered a role to teach, he instantly took it. He enjoyed teaching children at Crowne Hill school how to improve their sporting abilities and whilst doing so learnt how to coach a wide variety of sports, such as football, cricket, and tennis.
His willingness to be a professional footballer that is playing at the highest level was still there for Lowe, who despite the enjoyment of this job and what he had learnt from it, promised himself to leave and pursue playing at the top of the game, still very much aware of his true capabilities.
“I quit all of my jobs, I just knew that if I looked back, having retired at age 65 that I would be disappointed with the career and life that I would have had, having not pursued what I knew that I was capable of and above all what I really wanted to do, to play football at the highest level.”
“I vowed to stick it out, so when I wasn’t training at Hampton & Richmond Borough, I was at the gym, or I would take a bag of footballs to a local park and train there.”
An opportunity to sign for Portsmouth became available to him, he signed and scored in important matches as they won League two. This goalscoring form continued as he scored in the match were they won the F.A. Trophy, Paul Cook, who re-introduced Lowe to the professional game, kept an eye on his displays after leaving Portsmouth and then signed him whilst he was manager of Wigan.
Here, he was a very important player again, a large contributor to their best victories of the campaign, frustratingly for him though as he was trying to work his way to the top of this sport, Wigan Athletic were handed a 12-point deduction and despite his goalscoring ventures, they were relegated.
Again, relegation here could have been a pivotal point in Jamal Lowe’s pursuit of the elite level of football, however, his continued goalscoring form and displays on the pitch attracted interest from many a championship team and it was Swansea City that brought him in to improve their attack.
At Swansea, he is their joint-top goal scorer and here, he thinks, this is where he can achieve his ambition of playing in the premier league –
“I want to help this club to get to the premier league. The stature and the size of this club is something that you cannot escape.”
“You can’t ignore it and everyone the manager has spoken to me, he told me about what he is looking for and I’ve bought into it.”
“I want to show what I am capable of and I want this club to be successful.”
Statistics and a final preview
Whilst some might look to take a view that, their record against Manchester City historically isn’t astounding, having won only 7 of the 36 fixtures that these teams have played against each other, football fans would do well to remember that they were victorious against A Roberto Mancini side that were on their way to a premier league title at the Liberty stadium in 2012 and that a ‘shock’ is never all to far away in the F.A. cup, perhaps also particularly during an unprecedented time like this.
With their managers will to instil a winning mentality, the defensive record of the team so far and the attacking abilities of the talented Ayew, the hope to play at, compete against and beat teams from the highest level of professional football within Lowe as well as a variety of other players within their ranks who have had years of experience at playing football at the highest level. I think that Swansea will look to make this an incredibly competitive, exciting, and hard-fought F.A. cup tie against Manchester City.