[Lord Snooty]

Swansea City v Huddersfield Town
The Premier League
Saturday October 14th - 15:00 ko
at the Liberty Stadium

Huddersfield Town travel down to play Swansea City at the Liberty Stadium on Saturday afternoon, looking to bounce back from that home defeat to Spurs a fortnight ago. This is, of course, one of the matches where points on the board will be very much the target, as opposed to the last match and the next two (against Man Utd and Liverpool) where any points at all are a bonus.
Hopefully we will have Steve Mounié back in contention after he has missed the last four matches with a heel injury. His replacement, Laurent Depoitre, has filled in nicely, but the lack of goals must be something of concern to David Wagner as the big Belgian's goal against Leicester is our only one in the last six matches.

Swansea will have one of their long term absentees available for the visit of the Terriers. Nathan Dyer has been out for 8 months after rupturing his achilles tendon in February, but has made his come back with the u23s and is now back with the first team squad.
If we haven't scored many in the last 6 games, well neither have the Swans. They only have three goals all season in the Premier League. Two of them in a 2-0 win at Palace and the other in a 1-2 home defeat to Watford. They have failed to score in 5 of their 7 matches so far.

A brief history of Swansea City: Formed in 1912 as Swansea Town, they were elected into the Southern League and played at the Vetch Field, a field named so because of the type of vegetables that were grown there previously. In 1920 the Football League extended from 2 to 4 divisions and Swansea joined as new members of Division 3 (South). They won promotion to the 2nd division in 1925, staying there to the outbreak of the 2nd World War.
They were relegated in the first season after the war, but were soon back up again, staying in the 2nd division until getting relegated to the 3rd division in 1965. The club were renamed Swansea City in 1969 following an upgrade for the town, but their elevated status didn't match with success on the playing fields of vetch and they were relegated to division 4 in 1973.
Fortunes were to take a different turn however and in 1978 former Liverpool star, John Toshack, became player/manager. Remarkably he led the Swans to three promotions in 4 years and in 1981/82 they played their first ever top flight game with a famous 5-1 victory over the "Champions of Europe" Leeds United, with Bob Latchford scoring a hat trick.
They finished that season in 6th place, but that was it as far as success was concerned and even as much remarkable as their rise to the top, just 8 years after their first Toshack promotion, they were back down in the 4th division.
Promoted back up again to the 3rd division in 1988 and they made the play offs in 1993, losing out to West Brom. They of course won the Autoglass Tropy in 1994 (see below).
They went down and then back up and then back down again to the 4th tier, where they were playing in 2005 when they beat Shrewsbury 1-0 in the last match at the Vetch Field. This result clinched their promotion back up to League 1 before the move to the Liberty Stadium.
The first season in the new ground saw them win the Football League Trophy again and then they lost in the Play Off final against Barnsley. The second season saw them lose in the Play Offs again, but the next, now under the management of Roberto Martinez, saw them get automatic promotion to the Championship for the first time in 24 years.
The upward trend kept going and in 2011 Brendan Rodgers guided them to promotion to the Premier League through the Play Offs, beating Reading at Wembley.
Rodgers left to manage Liverpool, but two seasons later they won their first major trophy, the League Cup, beating Bradford City in the final 5-0 with goals from Nathan Dyer (2), Michu and Jonathan de Guzmán (2).
In 2014 they appointed Garry Monk as manager. He turned them from a comfortable mid table side to the struggling against relegation side they remain today.

Head to Head



Town lead in the overall head to head with 23 wins to Swansea's 14, with 15 draws.

The image of the programme above is from one of those draws, though it was the Swans who ran out winners in the end. It was of course, the 1994 Autoglass Trophy Final at the Empire Stadium, Wembley.
Town and Swansea were both comfortably mid table in the 3rd tier as they headed down Wembley way. We were planning the celebrations for the last match at Leeds Road, which was to be the week after. The season hadn't been a very good one, which could've been a relegation struggle. The run in the Autoglass Trophy galvanised the team, particularly a cracking win at Stockport County where Iain Dunn scored the winner on a ground where we had been thrashed the week before, and by the time manager Neil Warnock led the team out in this final, we were well safe and could go down their in good spirits.
Swansea had future Town star Steve Jenkins in at right back and the game didn't start well for Town, with Andy McFarlane putting the Swans one up in the 8th minute. But Town rallied and in the second half Richard Logan became only the 2nd player to score for Huddersfield Town at Wembley. We've only had four in total, Alex Jackson in the 1928 FA Cup Final and Andy Booth & Chris Billy against Bristol Rovers in the 1995 Play Offs being the only others.
Anyway, this game finished 1-1 and after extra time, it went to penalties. And we lost. Only Pat Scully scored for us as Swansea took it 3-1.
If you can bear to watch it, here's the penalty shoot out, a rare defeat for Town. The only other shoot outs we've lost being in the same competition, against Chesterfield and Bradford City.

Although both clubs have spent many years in Division 1 and now the Premier League, this will be the first ever meeting of the two in the top flight of English football. The first meetings were back in the 1950s in the old 2nd division. The most recent season we spent together was League 1 (3rd tier) in 2007/08. Both matches ended in 1-0 away wins.
Malvin Kamara scored for us on a Friday night down there and Jason Scotland it was who got their revenge in March.

We won at the Liberty Stadium the season before, so we go down there on something of a good run. We beat them 2-1 with two goals from Gary Taylor-Fletcher. Ex Town player Leon Knight got a late reply to make the last few minutes the usual nerve wracking end to a Town match. And our first visit to the new stadium was a 2-2 draw in the season before, so we are in fact unbeaten there. That was a comeback draw, being 2-0 down at half time, Martin McIntosh and David Graham the Town scorers.


So what's happening at the Liberty Stadium?  Managed nowadays by Paul Clement, the former Corinthian Casuals player. His dad, Dave, played for QPR and his brother Neil, West Brom, but Paul never made it to the professional game and instead concentrated on coaching. He began at Chelsea's centre of excellence, working his way through the ranks until finally becoming assistant to first team coach, Carlo Ancelotti. In his first season in this position they won the Premier League and the FA Cup.
He then held similar positions at Blackburn, PSG and Real Madrid before becoming head coach at Derby. Did quite well there, but was harshly sacked when they were in 5th place in the Championship. He then joined up once more with Ancelotti at Bayern Munich, before joining Swansea in January this year, saving them from relegation.



Notable players in their squad:- Wilfried Bony, is probably the best known of their squad. He had a good spell at Swansea, scoring 26 goals in 54 games, which earnt him a big move to moneybags Manchester City. He never fitted in there and so returned to the Liberty Stadium in the summer transfer window and famously introduced his return on social media with a song. This was nothing new to him of course because he was most famous before he started out in football as a founding member of the pop group Bony M, who had dozens of hit records. Here he is in action in one of those top tunes. He's the one in the false beard.

There are others in their squad who you may have heard of - Tammy Abraham, on loan from Chelsea and a team mate of Kasey Palmer and Izzy Brown in the all conquering Chelsea youth team. He was of course on loan at Bristol City last season and scored for them in both matches against us. In total he got 23 goals in his one season there, the second highest in the Championship and was made the Robins' Player of the Season.
He signed a new 5 year deal at Chelsea in the summer before going on a season's loan to Swansea and has scored three goals so far, At MK Dons in the Cup and against Palace and Watford in the Premier League.

Recent form: Town are 11th in the Premier League with 9 points. The Swans are 18th and in the bottom 3 with 5 points.

Last 6 matches:

Town 0-0 Southampton
West Ham 2-0 Town
Town 1-1 Leicester (Depoitre)
Crystal Palace 1-0 Town (EFL Cup)
Burnley 0-0 Town
Town 0-4 Spurs

Crystal Palace 0-2 Swansea (Abraham, Ayew)
Swansea 0-1 Newcastle
Spurs 0-0 Swansea
Reading 0-2 Swansea (Mawson, Ayew) (EFL Cup)
Swansea 1-2 Watford (Abraham)
West Ham 1-0 Swansea


Swansea's line up at West Ham:

1 Łukasz Fabiański - Polish international keeper, ex Arsenal.
26 Kyle Naughton - Ex Sheff Utd and Spurs defender.
33 Federico Fernández - Argentinian international centre back.
6 Alfie Mawson - Ex Barnsley centre back.
16 Martin Olsson - One half of the famous Olsson twins child TV stars.
35 Renato Sanches - Midfielder on loan from Bayern Munich.
7 Leon Britton - Ex Home Secretary in Thatcher government, now club captain.
14 Tom Carroll - Midfielder signed from Spurs in January.
18 Jordan Ayew - Brother of West Ham's André.
10 Tammy Abraham - Brother of Fulham's Timmy.
2 Wilfried Bony - Ivory Coast international striker.

Substitutes:
5 Mike van der Hoorn - 25 year old Dutch centre back.
8 Leroy Fer - 27 year old Dutch midfielder.
11 Luciano Narsingh - 27 year old Dutch winger.
13 Kristoffer Nordfeldt - Swedish goalie.
17 Sam Clucas - Scored against us for Hull City.
22 Àngel Rangel - Spanish right back with over 300 apps for the Swans.
51 Roque Mesa - Spanish midfielder signed in the summer from Las Palmas.

[Marco4]

Town were playing at Swansea the day Mrs Marco and I got together. Won 1-0, I think. Lunchtime game, maybe.

[St Charles Owl]

Marco, where the hell have you been???

Any chance you could update the Bingoal scores??

[theo_luddite]

Haha, welcome back Marco.
I'll be watching this live - on Sportsnet One from about 3500 miles away.
Great time to visit, just as their long hot summer goes for a ball of chalk.

Points and goals please Mr. Wagbo, we need both in this game.

[Marco4]

Thanks. Don't really know why I was away. Don't really know why I came back, only I was thinking at work that it was a nice positive forum to be part of, then forgot about it. Saw Snooty's post on Twitter and thought 'ah!'

Hello again.

[WakeyTerrier]

Morning all, had a chat with Wagner last night....well about 180 of us did at Middlestown WMC.
Good news, Mounié is back in contention for Swansea away this weekend

[Lord Snooty]

Sounds now like Mounie won't be fit for Saturday. That's according to match preview on Town website.

---

Still no Williams or Quaner either. We'll see what Wagz has to say in the press conference today.

[jjamez]

Think malone has to start on saturday.

[Lord Snooty]

Press conference is on.

Williams is available. Mounie has a chance.

---

No injuries for the international players.

---

Meanwhile, in Swansea. Clement says Renato Sanches is a major doubt.

---

Hefele not having surgery but will be rested for 4 to 6 weeks

---

Quaner back training next week. Palmer in a fortnight.

[Lord Snooty]

Bony Wilf only rated as 50/50 for Saturday.