leight-on in the game

Bye Bye Duffman

By Leighton Evans

We can’t let the issue go by without focusing on the departure of Michael Duff. And the best man for that particular job is the crustiest columnist on our payroll, the Swansea City Victor Meldrew…

In The Simpsons, Duffman is a mascot and chief spokesman for the ubiquitous Duff Beer Brewery that exhibits all the self-importance, over-statement, and banality of contemporary marketing. At Swansea City, Duffman was the recently departed manager Michael Duff who exhibited all the self-importance, over-statement, and banality of both contemporary football management and the ownership at the club.

ball hogs and disorganised shambles

Unlike Duffman, who makes me laugh, Michael Duff raised no joy during his morbid tenure at Swansea City.

There should be a very long and detailed port-mortem of this whole rotten episode, but I won’t hold my breath on that one. Instead, I worry that we are doomed to repeat the whole stinking mess once again in the future. We’ve finally gambled on Luke Williams and rebounded towards a possession based game, but you don’t get the feeling any lessons have been learned and when it comes time to replace Williams we are likely to lurch back to an opposite style once again.

The question that needs to be asked is this: what the hell was anyone thinking?

While the ‘Swansea Way’ borders on cliché, somebody must have noted that Michael Duff’s preferred playing style involved a complete reversal of the possession-based football that has been our trademark. That style is not just rooted in a preference for attractive football – it has a very practical application for a club like Swansea.

Given the financial constraints that we operate in, a possession-based style works to limit the damage that can be inflicted by more profligate and wealthier clubs that we compete with each season. Just throwing this style away this season has exposed what happens when we are not ball-hogs. We have become a disorganised shambles in midfield and the back, unable to control space when being attacked and unable to craft any kind of meaningful movement up the pitch when in possession.

wandering aimlessly

We have competed in the division over the past 5 years by being able to limit what other teams do to us – because we keep the ball. Even under Cooper, this was still a salient feature of how the team worked to protect leads and win games.

Duff threw this out immediately, replacing security with precarity and imbecility. Most of the time, we didn’t even look like we wanted the ball. Players looked like they were on loan for our immediate opposition, such was the frequency of giving the ball away. Defenders wandering aimlessly up the field, then being unable to pick any pass and giving the ball away was just the most visible aspect of this disorganisation.

The reasons underpinning this – lack of movement in midfield, tactical inflexibility and a startling lack of fitness and pace in the team – were all produced on the training pitch. I wonder what the hell, if anything, was done in training sessions since the summer. The debacle at Cardiff was characterised by a team that literally had no clue AT ALL what they were trying to do. We made an improved-but-still-mediocre Cardiff team look utterly dominant while crafting nothing of note in 90 minutes.

price rises - really?

One must wonder how on earth did the four-match winning run come together? Thanks to that, the rotten reign of Duff continued into December when it should have been terminated in October by the latest.

We did not improve much, just managed to attack in a manner which was more cohesive. The fundamental issues remained. The effects of the delay were apparent by simply opening one’s eyes at a home match. An atmosphere that was like a game being played on the moon and more empty seats than at a financial benefit concert for Sam Hamman.

It is going to require a serious turn around to reverse the effects of this witless, clueless football inflicted upon us this season. That the club has had the audacity to raise season ticket prices in response to this is another indication of the lack of joined up thinking at the club.

personality!

Finally, let’s not remember the man himself. Duff struck me as the sort of man who could not make a hyena on laughing gas raise a giggle.

Now, personality in football managers and players is very overrated. Most so-called personalities in the game are little more than braindead gobshites with the intelligence of a particularly stupid single cell amoeba. You do need a little of something though to get people on side. If Duff’s public persona was anything like his presence in training then it is little wonder that the team was so lethargic and without identity.

Duff’s proclamations before and after the Cardiff match were an indication that he simply did not get it at all. You don’t need to be a raving mad man to get people on board. You do need to understand the priorities of the supporters though and at least use that knowledge to get them on board. Duff was in full on conflict with the fans and seemed deeply uninterested in getting us onside. Not really someone you want to sing the name of in salutation.

The appointment of Williams will go some way towards reversing this, although just being a functioning human being will give him a head start over Duff.