Chapter IV
March 17th, Liberty Stadium, Dressing room at 2.50 PM..
Me: Alright boys! You know the drill, you know what to do. This game will be very tough, but play simple and safe. Shift the ball, dont try anything too fancy. We need only one goal, if we dont concede. Play extremely safe, dont underestimate Chelsea. Play through Joe, get the ball onto him. Sinclair and Routledge, stretch the play and offer through ball chances! Same applies to you Leroy. Garry?
Garry Monk, Captain of Swansea City; Okay ladies, Lets do this. WHO WANTS TO WIN!?
Swansea: SWANSEA CITY!
Me: Then lets ****** go out there!
I felt the boys we're really up for this. We had been training heavily the last days and we could win this, if everything goes as planned. I was surprised by Andre's decision to play Mata - Lukaku - Kalou attacking trio, but they all are very fast and slippery. We had to be extra cautious with them and I had instructed our defenders to mark them tightly...
I walked out of the tunnel, shook hands with Andre and sat down to my chair. This is it, 6th Round of FA Cup, if we're through to Semi Finals we have a great chance to win it all...
And then it started. Boys played very strict and safe football from the very first minutes. After 30 minutes, statistics showed 75% Possession to us, everything looked to go well until.....
Spectator: Lukaku in the box with a ball, passes to David Luiz outside of the box on right flank. David Luiz finds Ramires in the middle. He holds the ball and passes back to David Luiz near the 16 yard box line in the middle. David Luiz runs with the ball, gets inside the box, dribbles past his defender and shoots GOAAAL!! A superb performance from the Portuguese Attacker who is stuck in defender's body....
Me: For ***** sake! How they let him through!?
But the game wasnt over, half time approached and Chelsea led 1 - 0, but we had Possession of 70%. We had been doing well, but now we had to be a bit more attacking and I instructed the boys to be more attacking with their passing. And then the second half started....
Spectator: This is a great spell of dominance by the under-dogs Swansea City. Statistics show 73% Possession for them and clock shows 50 minutes, which is incredible against a team like Chelsea. Swansea City's passing has been great as they try to find the opening from the holeless defense of Chelsea, they seem to defend very tightly. Now its odde with a ball in the centre, he passes it back to Vorm, who decides to kick the ball away. The ball doesnt fly far tho as Ivanovic takes the ball in the middle of the pitch and puts Romelu Lukaku through on one on one with Vorm. Lukaku doesnt hesitate, he places the ball into the right hand corner of the net and Swansea City is sinking without a trace. Now what is this? Bob Rockwall is totally furious on the sidelines...
Me: ******* bullshit! Why the **** Michel kicked that ball, there wasnt any opposition players even near!
I knew this game was already over, though I tried my best to instruct the boys on the field. Chelsea was the stronger side and there is nothing to be ashamed of if we lose this game.. There was still 40 minutes to go, but I feel this was the end of our FA Cup journey...
Final whistle, Swansea City 0 - 2 Chelsea..
The final whistle and the Chelsea boys celebrated. They didnt deserve to win and as I went to congratulate Andre for the win, he told me we were the better team today even though we lost. Our Possession in the end was 71%, but we had only 5 shots, but so did Chelsea have. We could have done better, but this was not our destiny. When I went back to the dressing room, I took a look at the statistics which my coaches had done; It showed Joe Allen made 84 passes out of 90 tried. That was pretty good and I let him know that he did well.
After telling the whole group what I thought of the game, the positives and negatives, I left the dressing room and went to answer the media's questions in the press conference room.
More to follow....