Preview | Swansea City v Luton Town
Swansea City go in search of their first home win of the 2022-23 season this afternoon when they host Luton Town at the Swansea.com Stadium (3pm kick-off).
It was defeat at the death in midweek when a good overall performance was undone by two late goals for visitors Millwall meaning Russell Martin’s Swans had to settle for a point.
The Hatters are still searching for their first victory of the campaign picking up two points from four league games. Despite earning respectable draws in their opening matches against Birmingham City and Burnley, they are now on a run of three defeats losing out to Preston North End and Bristol City in the league and Newport County in the Carabao Cup.
TEAM NEWS
Russell Martin confirmed it was bad news for Joel Latibeaudiere with an initial assessment of his shoulder injury suggesting he could be sidelined for a minimum of three months.
Everyone else came through the game ok, and he is expecting the same squad available to him this afternoon.
PRE-MATCH VIEWS
Russell Martin:
“I'm sure [Luton will] continue to build on the great work they’ve done over the years there.
“It’ll be a tough game, they’ve been really unfortunate in a couple of games this season.
“We had two tough games against them last season and we expect the same again.”
Nathan Jones:
“We have a lot of injuries and we have people that need bedding in and to learn what we do but we just didn’t defend well enough, we weren’t aggressive enough, we didn’t do the basics and for me, I thought we were really, really poor [against Bristol].
"We have to go back to what we're good at, if we don’t then we will lose football matches.
"I have never gone four league games at this football club without winning a game so that is something new. We all have to learn, we all have to get better and we will."
REMEMBER THE LAST TIME?
Swansea City suffered defeat at the Swansea.com Stadium as Harry Cornick’s strike gave Luton Town all three points.
Russell Martin’s side had chances to take something from the game, with Ben Cabango hitting the post and Michael Obafemi and Joel Piroe being denied from close range.
But the visitors, who had seen Danny Hylton and Allan Campbell waste good first-half chances, struck the decisive blow when Cornick swept a right-footed shot into the far corner with 18 minutes to play.
PRIME NUMBERS
0.02 – Swansea City and Luton Town rank among the highest xG in the league despite only scoring four goals and one goal respectively. Swans have an average of 1.24 XG and the Hatters have an average of 1.22 xG per game – a difference of 0.02. Only Middlesbrough, West Bromwich Albion, Sunderland and Norwich City have registered higher numbers.
2 – This is a fixture that generally delivers goals. You have to go all the way back to 1949 for the last time they played out a 0-0 draw. In fact, of the 58 meetings between the two sides only two have been goalless.
3.5 – On a similar theme to the stat above, not only does this game rarely end without a goal scored, it often delivers a lot of them. The fixture has produced an average of 3.5 goals per game since it was first played in 1920. A number which is significantly higher than the Championship's 2.31 per game average.