Swansea 0 West Ham 0
Goals seem as hard to come by as managers in this part of south Wales at the moment. Yet to appoint a replacement for Garry Monk and with only one win from their last 13 league matches, Swansea's frustration continues on and off the pitch after a result that ensures they will spend Christmas Day in the relegation zone.
Swansea controlled the game for long periods against a West Ham side that looked there for taking given all their injury problems but the fact that only Aston Villa and Stoke City have scored fewer goals than the Welsh club this season tells its own story. Huw Jenkins, the chairman, needs to recruit a proven striker as well as a manager over the coming weeks if Swansea are to start climbing the table.
There was no shortage of effort as the home side huffed and puffed, with Adrían, the West Ham goalkeeper, making a couple of excellent saves to deny Ki Sung-yueng in the first half and Jack Cork on the hour mark, yet Swansea seemed to run out of ideas as the game wore on.
As for West Ham, Slaven Bilic departed with the point that he had set his team up to collect. With Andy Carroll, Winston Reid, Victor Moses, Manuel Lanzini, Diafra Sakho and Dimitri Payet all absent through injury, this was never going to be the West Ham side that wreaked havoc on the road earlier in the season. They have now gone seven games without a win yet it is Swansea, not West Ham, who are looking anxious over their shoulder.
It is now 11 days since Monk was sacked as manager and the failure to land a replacement so far meant that we had to make do with a picture of Jenkins collecting his OBE from the Duke of Cambridge at Windsor Castle rather than his usual column in the matchday programme. “Due to Huw’s recent travels in search of a new first-team manager, his programme notes will return on Boxing Day when the Swans host West Bromwich Albion in the Premier League.”
Looking down from the director’s box, Jenkins will have taken some encouragement from the first-half performance, even if familiar problems, in particular the absence of a ruthless touch in front of goal, were once again apparent. Enjoying 74 per cent of possession against a severely depleted West Ham team, Swansea dominated but only created a sprinkling of chances across that period.
Neil Taylor, keen to get forward on the Swansea left at every opportunity, rolled a ball into the feet of Bafetimbi Gomis, whose neat lay-off ran perfectly for Ki, but the midfielder’s low 12-yard angled shot was repelled by Adrían’s right-boot. Andre Ayew had a couple of chances either side of that opening. The Ghanaian headed the first, from a deep Taylor centre, onto the roof of the net, and swept the second wide after a clever backheel from Cork opened up space inside the West Ham area.
The visitors were subdued, content to sit deep and sporadically break on the counterattack. With Nikica Jelavic making his first start of the season because of Carroll’s injury, there was no physical threat up front and all West Ham had to show for their efforts in the first half were a couple of speculative Mauro Zarate shots from distance, the second of which was going wide despite Lukasz Fabianski making a spectacular save.
Swansea continued to press forward after the restart. Cork, after Cheikhou Kouyaté only half-cleared a Gylfi Sigurdsson free-kick, struck a superb right-footed volley from 20 yards that was arrowing towards the top corner only for Adrían to produce a fine save.
Back came Swansea again. Ki played a neat one-two with Sigurdsson that carved West Ham open and when the South Korean’s right-footed shot struck James Collins on the hand, the home side desperately appealed for a penalty. Lee Mason, however, refused to point to the spot, with the referee perhaps deeming that contact was accidental. Either way it was curious that Collins went down holding his head.
By that point Bilic had withdrawn Zarate and replaced him with Enner Valencia, who forced Fabianski into a fingertip save when he cut in from the left and unleashed a powerful 25-yard shot.
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