Match Preview – Brighton v Swansea City
Swansea City – the club
A club who escaped relegation from the Football League on the final day of the season, built a new stadium and rose through the leagues from the bottom division to the top. Sound familiar? The similarities between the Swansea City and Brighton and Hove Albion stories are huge, and we’d do well to continue to follow them. In their second season in the Premier League, they lifted the League Cup at Wembley and that meant they played Europa League football in their third. Things have gone downhill slightly since then and they’ve rifled through a raft of managers with Carlos Carvalhal – a man who achieves the seemingly impossible of actually speaking more crap then we post on our Twitter feed – now in the hot seat. In just a few short months in charge he’s mastered wins over Liverpool and Arsenal to give a real boost to the Swans chances of survival, but even more impressive is that he’s managed to get an analogy about a dying patient in an emergency ward and a Formula One car stuck in traffic in central London into his pre and post match press conferences. It’s like listening to David Brent on crack.
Swansea – the place
Swansea was originally a Viking trading post but it really came into its own in the Industrial Revolution. Being a port city meant it could ship stuff places and Wales had plenty of stuff to ship back then including coal, wine and wool from all those sheep the country is home to. Smelting was also big business in the town and the smelters of Swansea became so adept at the skill that they began receiving ore concentrates from the United States to extract gold and silver from. It’s industrial importance meant that much of Swansea was destroyed by the Luftwaffe in War World II and as industries declined, so did the cities fortunes. It wasn’t all bad news though – Prince Charles liked the place enough to decide to make it a city in 1969 when he was invested as the Prince of Wales.
Swansea – the people
Dylan Thomas is Swansea’s best known son, producing some of the greatest poems known to man such as “Do not go gentle into that good night” and “And death shall have no dominion” despite the fact he looked like a bull frog. This pales into the cultural significance of such acts as firing a BB gun at your penis from a matter of yards, taking part in a hurdle race over barbed wire while naked or attempting to snort a metre of strong mustard and for this reason, Pancho from Dirty Sanchez remains our favourite person from Swansea.
A good WeAreBrighton.com memory of Swansea at home
Scoring goals against Swansea is something we struggle with, let alone winning games. We’ve drawn a blank on five of our last six meetings with the Swans which makes a good memory of the fixture particularly hard to come by although we did enjoy seeing Roberto Martinez’s side lifting the League One title at Withdean on the final day of the 2007-08 season, simply because it meant The Leeds United hadn’t been successful in their appeal to have a points deduction overturned which could have made them champions, instead meaning the most homophobic fans in the country faced another season slumming it in the third tier.
A bad WeAreBrighton.com memory of Swansea at home
Saturday 10th January 1998 and barely over a thousand fans bothered to traipse to Gillingham for the visit of the Swans. Soccerbase says that the visitors won 1-0 on the day through a goal from Tony Bird but more impressively, they had a player called L Jenkins in their ranks. Could it have been the famous World of Warcraft player LEEEERRRROOOOOOYYY JEEEENNNKKIIINNSSSSS before he sought fame and fortune from killing all his friends in the game? We’ll never know.
Played for both
There was a period at the start of this decade when Swansea unloaded an absolute mountain of shit on us at quite an expense. Ryan Harley, Stephen Dobbie and Kemy Agustien all arrived from the Liberty Stadium within the space of two years and offered about as much to the Albion as a stall selling gloves at a meeting of thalidomide sufferers.
Dangermen
Tammy Abraham started the season well but four goals in 21 appearances isn’t really good enough given the eye watering fee that the Swans had to pay his agent/father in order to secure his services in the summer. That was enough to put the Albion off and it looks like a bullet dodged. Jordan Ayew is their top scorer with four while Lukasz Fabianski remains one of the most underrated goalkeeper in the top flight.
Betting
Brighton and Swansea are two of the lowest scoring sides in the Premier League and you have to go back nearly 11 years to find the last time both teams scored in the fixture. We’re backing both teams to score no at 31/30 while four of Pacal Gross’ five goals so far this season have come in games after he has had a week off, either through international breaks or being rested for the FA Cup. He didn’t play against Coventry last weekend and so comes into this one fresh. 33/10 for Gross to score anytime.
Prediction
The same as last time at the Liberty Stadium – a 1-0 win for the Albion.
