Hello everyone,
As you know, it's been a very busy few days with two games in four days against Newcastle and West Bromwich Albion. Thankfully we secured back to back wins, which I think we thoroughly deserved.
It was great to see AC back at the Boleyn and causing the Newcastle defence problems. I thought he was excellent against West Brom too. His overhead effort that led to Kev's goal was a demonstration of what he can do. It's great to have him back and I know he's loving it.
It was also nice to get an assist for Tonks' goal. He's had a bit of stick after the Everton game but he responded in the best way possible by scoring the winning goal.
During the game their defenders had been marking AC and Reidy but hadn't been concentrating on Tonks so I put the ball in an area he could attack and thankfully he did the rest.
We've scored a lot of headers this season, but not many from set pieces. We work on them a fair amount in training, both defensively and attacking so it was nice to see it come off in a match.
It was a big win for us on Tuesday but we know we can still improve. We should have come out of the blocks better than we did and that is something we will look to do on Sunday against Swansea City this Sunday at the Boleyn Ground.
We know it will be a tough game as Swansea have some quality players that we will need to look out for.
Wilfried Bony is a player we know we'll have to keep quiet while Gylfi Sigurdsson is another player I admire. We know we'll have to limit their time on the ball and if we do that we have a good chance of getting a result.
Swansea, like ourselves, have had a good season so far. As have Southampton, I think they've surprised a lot of people. Overall, teams doing better than expected is good for the league as it makes it less predictable and more exciting.
Having won four of our home games already, we want to continue our form and turn the Boleyn into a real fortress, one that teams don't look forward to visiting.
After Sunday, the games keep coming thick and fast as we have five games in 19 days over the Christmas period.
It's a difficult time coming up, as you'll remember last year we suffered from a lot injuries and suspensions. This season however, we have a bigger squad and a good strength in depth which will really help us out.
It was good to see Enner Valencia coming on for the last 25 minutes on Tuesday as he recovers from injury and hopefully we'll have Diafra and Alex back with us soon.
See you on Sunday!
Stewart