Steve Cooper wants Swansea City to embrace fresh start

Steve Cooper wants Swansea City to embrace a fresh start when they kick-off the Championship season at Preston this afternoon (3pm), and put thoughts of last season out of their minds.

The Swans start the 2020-21 season at Deepdale, barely six weeks after seeing their promotion hopes ended by Brentford in the 2019-20 play-offs.

Cooper’s side were among the form teams in the division in the period after the resumption of football, allowing them to surge into the top six courtesy of a dramatic win at Reading on the final day of the season.

Those showings have raised hopes and expectation levels in SA1, but Cooper and his players have been at pains to point out that everyone starts again from zero this weekend.

What has gone before will not ensure points are picked up this time round.

“We start just by looking to Saturday, we have to be careful not to compare everything to last season because the landscape is very different,” said head coach Cooper.

“New players have arrived, some have left, the game schedule is different. It’s a clean slate.

“So, you won’t hear me talk about last season at all. It is a fresh start and a tougher challenge.

“We are a different team in some ways, so we have to respect everything ahead of us and give the very best we can.

“It’s a tough game to start and it will need everything we have got. We will take it step by step and we will end up where we deserve to be.

“No-one looks at league positions, for a while because there are so many games.

“You have to control what you can control, which is how we perform Saturday. Anything outside of that is not a concern.”