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Swansea vs West Brom – Premier League Match Preview

Swansea have hit rock bottom, well at least in Premier League terms. They are the first team in the division to sit at the foot of the table that is not called Crystal Palace after Roy Hodgson’s resurgence picks up pace with the Selhurst Park outfit.

That is undoubtedly a place that Swansea fans will not want to be in but at the same time there may be something of a realisation of their expectations after selling what attacking threats they previously possessed in the Summer transfer window.

There have been many column inches written about the fact that Gylfi Sigurdsson and Fernando Llorente have moved onto pastures new but the fact their replacements have failed to pull up any trees in their absence will be of the biggest concern to Paul Clement.

He may well have publicly backed Renato Sanches after a continual string of much maligned performances by the Portuguese international but privately there must be a level of despair at the fact that he has now served up 512 Premier League minutes without a positive contribution (either a goal or an assist)

The story is slightly better if you are Wilfried Bony as he scored his first goal of the season last weekend away at Stoke but we are now 15 games in to the campaign, admittedly he joined a month later than the start but the figures do not make for good reading in terms of the Ivorian.

And you can say the same for Swansea as a whole, it is just eight goals from those 15 Premier League fixtures. That’s an average of 0.53 goals per game. The kind of goal ratio which only lends itself to one thing, that being the very dark prospect of relegation.

The same could be said for a team that has not won any of their last 13 Premier League outings and West Brom will need to make sure that the run ends sooner rather than later, you could say that the run doesn’t even need to end soon it needs to end today.

Life post Tony Pulis has seen some shoots of recovery, as Gary Megson and then Alan Pardew have at least not been on the losing side when in charge of the Baggies. The last three games have seen West Brom have to make do with a share of the points each time.

Last weekend in what was Alan Pardew’s first game in charge of West Brom, they were held by a Crystal Palace side who picked up a second successive point in the space of a week. The former Eagles may not have got off to the perfect start but he will certainly be boosted by the fact that his side created chances.

But a streak as long as 13 matches without a win can only be a millstone round the neck of any team and although they cannot drop in the bottom three this afternoon unless there is an outrageous goal swing between them and their opposition last weekend the last thing they will want is to not only be level with points with Palace but also let Swansea condense the bottom four clubs even further.

It is perhaps too early to be talking about six pointers but you do get the feeling that this game may well have the air of one, so much so that it may well become a fixture that neither team can ill afford to lose and therefore they could cancel each other out. I’ll go with a draw at the Liberty Stadium.

Here is what social media thinks will happen – you can still vote on the outcome

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