Swansea 1 - Chelsea 1 Stats and Chalkboards

So often when reviewing matches, the narrative in the media depends on the final scoreline, with last week against Man City, Swansea being 'brave losers' and Man City 'Doing what champions do' in grinding out a 1-0 win.

This week against Chelsea, Swansea again conceded around the hour mark but thanks to Pablo's well taken late equaliser took a point from the game.  In most matches there are tiny margins between success and failure.  Thanks in no small part to the efforts of the crowd, there was a huge change in momentum after the Chelsea goal as Chelsea largely looked to hold what they had.

Swansea/Chelsea Attempts on Goal Before and After Chelsea's goal (61st Minute)

The two Chalkboards show pretty much a reversal in activity before/after the Chelsea goal.

The passing stats show the change after the goal, where before the goals, the figures were almost identical, the final half hour or so saw Swansea's increase to 91% and Chelsea's drop to 82%.

Swansea made 50% more successful passes than Chelsea after the Chelsea goal

These passes from Swansea weren't just spraying it around at the back, going nowhere, there was a plenty of attempts to engineer possession within the opposition penalty area, in particularly by Pablo Hernandez who I think has really started to settle in the side in the last couple of weeks.

As can be seen by his chalkboard of final third passes after the Chelsea goal, there are plenty of similar balls played at a slight diagonal to someone just inside the penalty area.  It won't work every time but when it does, it creates real pressure from the option of the recipient being able to turn and shoot or laying it back to someone on the edge of the area as happened with Pablo's goal.

Final Third Passes made by Hernandez/Swansea after the Chelsea goal, nearly all passes  going towards the area came from Hernandez

With regards to other individual performances, De Guzman made more successful tackles (5) than any player (next highest was Oscar with 3) and was also the most fouled player in the match (5 times) and despite only making one foul was himself booked (although more for the reaction than the foul). This was probably understandable given the number of niggly fouls that Chelsea conceded without receiving bookings which certainly felt unfair, although rational evaluation tends to go out the window when 1 down and time running out.

Tackle activity and Fouls suffered by De Guzman, as well as this activity he also had the most attempts on goal by a Swansea player.

Ki Sung-Yueng had another impressive display making 62 successful passes from 63 attempts, it'd be a fair point to say most of the are lateral rather than forward but like Allen last season, that's what he's there for, to keep the ball moving and to offer an outlet to his team mates.

Passing from Ki, including a perfect 2nd half (41 from 41)

The performances of the last week or so will be devalued to some extent however if there is a weak performance against Southampton next Saturday.  With Norwich and Wigan seemingly getting their act together, it is likely to become quite congested between about 8th down to edge of the relegation places, the hope may be that Southampton and Reading implode leaving just one remaining relegation spot and the game against Southampton offers a chance to put some real distance between us.

Twitter: @we_r_pl http://www.twitter.com/we_r_pl

Match Stats: Created using Statszone

Chalkboards: Created using Statszone http://fourfourtwo.com/statszone