A MESSAGE FROM
RUSSELL MARTIN G
ood evening and welcome back to the Swansea.com Stadium for our Championship game against Luton Town. It is great to be back on home soil after back-to-back away games and I would like to start my programme notes today by talking about our brilliant supporters. You have travelled in excess of 1500 miles with recent trips to Huddersfield, QPR and Hull – which is nothing short of incredible – and has just reiterated the brilliant backing that you’ve given myself, my staff and the players since we came to the club just five days before the start of the season. Your support certainly doesn’t go unnoticed and we are striving so hard to give you a team to be proud of, a team to identify with and a team that is worthy of your magnificent backing. The opening 20 minutes ended up costing us and we didn’t react well to conceding the first goal. But the second half was the opposite and I thought the players were outstanding.
We should have scored at least a couple of goals, but I really liked what I saw in the second half. There are positives to take but we need to get back to showing what we are about from the off and keep showing that courage and mentality to play the way we know we can and be the team we want to be. Against QPR we showed tremendous bravery to play the way we did, on a difficult pitch, and on another day we take all three points from that game. To play that way – and how we always want to – takes great courage and I’m so proud of the players for their application every single day. Ye st erday s aw the J anuar y transfer window close and we’ve been able to add five players to the squad as well as seeing others depart for pastures new. Following the arrivals of Andy Fisher, Cyrus Christie and Hannes Wolf, we also brought in Finley Burns from Manchester City and Nathanael Ogbeta from Shrewsbury. Both are exciting young players and we are excited to work with them and help develop them, while it has allowed
Brandon Cooper to go out on loan to Swindon for the rest of the season which is a great move for him. The point in letting players go out on loan is that we don’t want to be selfish with people’s careers if they are not playing for us. Young players need to be out playing and the benefits can be huge. Hopefully those lads all get used to playing games every week and come back to us in a really good position. Back we now turn our attention to league matters, starting with tonight’s game against Luton which kick starts the first of seven games in February. They are doing well under Nathan Jones, who continues to do a fantastic job there in his second spell in charge. We know it will be a tough test, but we are determined to get back on track and return to winning ways in front of the Jack Army once again. Enjoy the game, Russell
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