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Cheltenham Town 1 Swansea City 2 | |
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Cheltenham Town 1 Swansea City 2 - Report and Pictures Dai Smith
Around 1,100 travelling Jacks made their way the relatively short trip to Cheltenham for this rearranged game. The Swans lined up
DeVries Rangel - Monk Lawrence - Austin Britton - Pratley - O'Leary - Robinson Scotland - Duffy As in a number of games this season, the Swans started slowly and found themselves a goal behind after only 5 minutes.  Cheltenham's keeper launched a long clearance down field that was flicked on by ex Swan Paul Connor. The ball travelled in behind Angel Rangel, it appeared that DeVries might come for the ball and didn't. Denis Lawrence hesitated in dealing with it - this allowed Cheltenham midfielder Ashley Vincent to nip in and roll a shot beyond Dorus de Vries into the right hand corner of the net. The blame game will make sure that Lawrence takes the rap, but DeVries or maybe Rangel were equally culpable. The Swans looked a shadow of the side that finished against Carlisle and found many of their passes going astray. Pratley making a number of poor passes, but he was by no means the only guilty party in a pretty poor first half show  Cheltenham had another good chance on the half-hour mark when a cross was nodded down by Paul Connor and DeVries excellently parried away Andy Lindegaard's stinging shot. The best effort of the half probably came from Jason Scotland who saw a powerful shot scrape the paint off Cheltenham's bar. The second half saw Martinez make two changes bringing Painter on for Austin and Butler on for the out of sorts Pratley. The Swans started the half with much more purpose with Painter & Robinson on the left and Rangel & Butler on the right. (Leon moved into the centre with KOL.  The goal came within a few minutes of the restart. A through ball from Rangel saw the Cheltenham defence get their off side sums wrong. Scotland ran forward to coolly score his sixth goal of the season. The Swans were very much on top now with Andy Robinson having a superb game but were almost the victim of a sucker punch when Garry Monk mis-controlled to allow Connor to have a snap shot - De Vries dived at full-length to save and 1100 Welshmen breathed a sigh of relief. With about 20 minutes left, Robinson took a corner from the left which was headed clear by Cheltenham's defence. Robinson picked up the loose ball and cut inside onto his right foot before driving a low shot past Higgs from the corner of the area.  Robinson and Scotland both had chances to sew things up, but in reality the Swans held on comfortably until the final whistle. Unfortunately not everything in the garden is rosy with both Leon Britton and Andy Robinson appearing to pick up hamstring pulls near the end of the game. I hope Andy Robinson in particular can recover from his injury in time for Saturday at Leeds as he was truly superb in the second half. The Swans now up to fourth place in the League One table.  Cheltenham: Higgs, Jeremy Gill, Caines, Townsend, Ridley, Lindegaard (Yao 79), Finnigan, Bird, Vincent (Myrie-Williams 74), Connor, Spencer. Subs Not Used: Scott P Brown, Connolly, Gallinagh. Booked: Caines, Finnigan. Goals: Vincent 4.
Swansea: De Vries, Rangel, Lawrence, Monk, Austin (Painter 46), Britton (Anderson 83), O'Leary, Pratley (Butler 46), Robinson, Scotland, Duffy. Booked: Rangel, Robinson. Goals: Scotland 50, Robinson 69. Att: 4,323 Ref: Mike Thorpe (Suffolk).
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