As last season much was made of the fact we hadn't played Swansea for 25 years I imagined fixtures between us were rare. But actually we met the Swans several times in the 20's, 40's, 60's and 70's. In all we've played them 38 times, winning 13, drawing 7 and losing 18. We've scored 54 goals to their 60, and both our biggest wins and losses were by 3 goals on several occassions.
Our record away at the Liberty Stadium and before it the Vetch Field is pretty poor. We've played 20 times, winning 3, drawing 3 and losing 14. Travelling down to Swansea Town, as they were then, when we met them in the old Division 3 days must have been an extremely depressing experience as we never managed to beat them in over 50 years of trying. It wasn't until May 1977 that we managed an away win, a 4-1 victory slightly making up for the years of hurt. Six years later we won 3-1 there in our first season in Division One.
After not playing for a quarter of a century, last season we were away to Swansea twice in three days under the temporary stewardship of one Malky Mackay. We went down 3-1 on a foul wet Sunday after Lee Williamson had put us ahead. Just re-reading my comments about the game it was interesting to note that I'd queried MM's substitution choices back then. Little more than 48 hours later we made amends by winning a Carling Cup 4th Round tie 1-0, Williamson again was the scorer.
The last time we met was in February as we recorded a mightly impressive 2-0 victory at Vicarage Road over a Swansea side who'd just received several plaudits for dumping Fulham out of the FA Cup. It was probably Judas' finest hour as our manager.
Swansea's start to the season hasn't exactly changed my opinion that Paolo Sousa probably wasn't the man to replace Roberto Matinez. They lost on the opening day to Leicester, went down 3-0 at Middlesborough, drew 0-0 with Judas before winning 1-0 at Coventry on Saturday. In the Carling Cup they beat Brighton in the first round, before being involved in what would've been the most talked about tie of Tuesday night, if it hadn't been for some idiots at Upton Park.
Having made all three subs they equalised against Scunthorpe with ten minutes to go before having a player sent off and their goalscorer going off injured. In extra time they then had a further two players red carded before another player got injured but had no choice but to carry on. During all of this Scunthorpe scored a penalty and so they'll be in the next round draw on Saturday.
As far as I can see there are no links at all between the current players on either side. Even mutual friends are hard to find. The best I can come up with from recent times is my mate Kenny Jackett and then the motley crew of Des Lyttle, Paul Miller, Paul Atkinson and Gary Chivers.
