Swansea City Coach Williams Demands More Attacking Progress Despite Defensive Strength

Luke Williams, Swansea City’s head coach, believes his team has reached its defensive peak but stresses the necessity of continued improvement in the final third to sustain their current positive form. Following a six-game winless streak, which included a challenging five-match period without scoring, Swansea has boosted morale by securing consecutive Championship victories against Watford and Oxford United. Last weekend, Zan Vipotnik and Florian Bianchini scored against Oxford, while another summer signing, Myles Peart-Harris, netted the only goal in the match against Watford. After dominating against the Hornets for an hour, Swansea successfully resisted a spell of late pressure to achieve their fifth clean sheet of the season. Williams perceives indications that his squad is capable of competing effectively in the Championship, yet he desires further advancement in their offensive capabilities. “There aren’t many teams who you think were a really good side but they couldn’t defend, or they were really good [defensively] but couldn’t pass the ball for toffee,” the Swansea head coach said.”I think you have to do both. Hopefully we are showing that we are pretty mean defensively – we don’t ship too many goals and we have a lot of clean sheets.”The big challenge was that we had to score more goals and we are scoring more, but I think still we can increase that with the ball we have and the attacking actions we have.” Swansea has conceded fewer goals than any team outside the Championship’s top six, having allowed opponents to score only nine times across 14 league matches and avoiding any defeat by a margin greater than one goal throughout the season. Nevertheless, even with their recent successes, Swansea remains the division’s lowest-scoring team, with a total of only nine goals netted so far. “I think we will have to go some to be a better side defensively – I think we are there pretty much,” added Williams, whose team are next in action at Burnley on Sunday.”But we have to try to continue to make more of the volume of ball we have.”