Potter pleased with Swansea fight as they battle back to beat Blackburn

Posted Wednesday, October 24, 2018 by PA

Swansea manager Graham Potter told his players to find their nasty streak before they turned things around to seal a 3-1 victory over Blackburn Rovers.

The Swans were made to pay for failing to turn their early pressure into a goal when Adam Armstrong surged down the left and found Amari’i Bell in the box.

The full-back checked inside and went down after Kyle Naughton tugged his shirt to leave referee Geoff Eltringham little choice but to point to the spot.

Blackburn skipper Mulgrew sent Kristoffer Nordfeldt the wrong way to make it 1-0 after 19 minutes.

Potter sent Leroy Fer and Jay Fulton into the action for the second-half and the gamble paid off after 64 minutes when Fulton unleashed a right-footed shot from outside the box and watched it cannon off the post, and then in via the back of Blackburn goalkeeper David Raya.

It got even better for the hosts four minutes later when Connor Roberts fired the ball into the bottom corner for his third goal of the season.

All the hard work was almost in vain when Bradley Dack forced Nortfeldt to go full stretch to stop a driven shot from finding the bottom corner.

But Potter and the Swansea fans could finally relax five minutes from time thanks to Bersant Celina, who drove into the box and dinked the ball over the onrushing Raya into the net to secure the 3-1 victory and all three points.

“We needed to change our behaviour out on the pitch, we had to lift our intensity,” said Potter. “I thought we were too nice in the first-half so we made that point and didn’t say too much else.

“The players are good lads and they’re learning, it’s not like we’ve got a group full of 28-year-old Championship players who have 300 games under their belts.

“They’re a group who need to learn, and as much as we want to play nice football and win, you have to have a bit of pain and suffer.

“The one thing I can never accuse the players of is being dishonest, they’re an honest group.

“They’re a long group who have been on a pretty bad run with only one win in seven, so there is a certain nervousness around and that showed, because they weren’t themselves in the first-half.”

Blackburn manager Tony Mowbray lamented his side’s six-hour journey to South Wales after they faded away in the second-half.

“The result is not very good, but the game I thought we were pretty good for long spells and didn’t feel threatened,” he said.

“But the more it got stretched their mobile, fast ball travellers gave us problems. We will brush ourselves down and get ready to go on Saturday.

“We have been sitting on a bus for six hours but gave a good account of ourselves. The game ran away for us and they didn’t create the first goal it was a great strike, hit the post, was coming out but hit our goalie and went in.

“They scored again within a few minutes and we had to go chasing the game.

“I think it’s 18 months since we lost back-to-back games so we will go there and be really positive and try to take the game to West Brom and see how we get on.”