Alan Sheehan | We had good spells, but we were a bit flat at times

Head coach Alan Sheehan felt Swansea City was happy to see many of his squad get a first full 90 minutes of pre-season under their belt against Exeter City, but admitted his side had been guilty of letting their energy levels slip at times at St James Park.

The Swans played out a 1-0 defeat against the Grecians as Sonny Cox grabbed the only goal of the game just after half-time.

As had been the case at Cheltenham in midweek, the visitors had plenty of chances. 

Melker Widell, Cameron Congreve, Ronald and Goncalo Franco all had sights of goal, while Congreve, Cameron Burgess and Zan Vipotnik all had goals chalked off.

Sheehan was pleased with the opportunities his side again created, but acknowledged they had let the game drift in its middle phase.

“I thought we started quite well and created some chances, but then we went pretty flat in the middle of the game,” said Sheehan.

“We started the second half poorly, their goal has come from an individual error. So we gave them a goal, and then we woke up and again had a few chances, had a couple of goals disallowed. We are just lacking a little bit in the final third.

“We had a great following down here and we want to give them as good a day as possible, we were just lacking that bit of fluidity at times.

“But we got more players having minutes together, quite a few of the team got their first 90 minutes of pre-season.

“We know we have quite a few things we need to improve on to make sure we are ready to go in a couple of weeks.”

The Swans boss also delivered an update on the fitness of a handful of players who were unavailable for the clash with the Grecians.

Ben Cabango, Ricardo Santos, Filip Lissah, Jisung Eom and Zeidane Inoussa were all absent at St James Park.

And Sheehan confirmed Santos is set to miss the start of the season after suffering a knee injury when landing awkwardly in the opening stages of the midweek fixture at Cheltenham.

“We are without three centre-halves and two wingers at the moment,” he said.

“Anyone who was at the Cheltenham game will know about Ricardo. He had a shocking landing, and he will be out for a while now as he hyperextended his leg.

“Ben Cabango is incredibly important to us, and we are going to get him scanned again as he has a little something in his calf which we need to look further into.

“Filip Lissah turned his ankle, the same as we had with Jisung, and Inoussa was left out as a precaution.”