By Graham Thomas
When football managers – and rugby coaches – talk about training sessions having “an edge” about them, it normally only means one thing.
There’s been a fight.
It may not have been full-on, fists swinging, bare-knuckle bruising. But someone, somewhere has over-stepped the mark and tempers have boiled over.
Nine times out of 10, managers love this kind of thing. It proves their players are more like thin, hungry dogs, than fat, sleepy cats and they look forward to unleashing the hounds on Saturday afternoon.
It’s in that context we should view Swansea City head coach Luke Williams’ comments that his players have been getting angry in training this week.
After all, when it comes to goals and victories, the Swans have all been on starvation rations for the past few weeks.
No victory in six matches and no goals for 525 minutes, as they prepare to go to Oxford United this weekend.
“There’s been just the right amount of anger, but we need that because we know we should have had more points,” says Williams.
“It would be different if we felt that we weren’t anywhere near in games. That is where the frustration is stemming from.
“These guys are so desperate to do well, they want to have a good season, do well and help the club. They have to relax a bit more in the big moments. It’s a group of young players, particularly at the top of the pitch, and they will come good.
“The players are motivated and working hard for each other, we’re competitive in the games, and there are small margins in the games that could have meant we came away with more points. So, it’s not as terrible as it sounds.”
All that pent up anger and frustration needs an outlet somewhere, so it has spilled into training.
But Williams must hope his players have kept enough back to inflict something upon Oxford at the Kassam Stadium.
A month ago, Swansea were on the fringes of the play-offs. But the impoverished nature of their recruitment over recent times has been exposed.
They cannot score and they cannot win, so the lowest scorers in the Championship have slipped down the table to 17th place.
They have a very solid defence, but eight goals conceded in 12 games is not much use when you have only scored the same number.
Especially as they have gone: draw, defeat, draw, defeat, draw, defeat, in sequence across those six winless matches.
Williams is not yet under pressure when it comes to his job security, but he knows that a couple more matches without a win and that’s where he is heading.
It’s one of the modern maxims of football that eight matches without a victory is normally the point at which fans turn and directors start to feel sweaty.
When the Swans lost 1-0 at home to Millwall last weekend – a match they had mostly dominated without often looking like scoring – there were boos ringing around the Swansea.Com Stadium.
Wisely, Williams chose not to take issue with their reaction – however painful it must have felt.
“I haven’t got a single negative thing to say about the fans’ reaction, far from it,” he said. “I am with them. I am completely with them.”
Nor was he letting his strikers off the hook by talking about the pressure they might be feeling.
“There’s a lot of noise around football and Championship level is a big level. If that affects the players, I’m sorry, but you have to get on with it because there isn’t a single striker on the planet who isn’t under pressure and doesn’t feel some pressure to score a goal.
“We have to overcome that, for sure.”
All managers and coaches have to strike that right balance between protecting their players and showing affinity with the fan-base, and so far Williams is doing that more successfully than he is picking up results.
The Bluebirds are also 6/4 for the win, with Norwich at 13/8.
