Swansea City have stopped the rot and avoided a fifth successive league defeat, yet this was not the result they wanted or needed on a day when Leroy Fer squandered a wonderful late chance to give their season the lift it so badly needs and to ease the pressure on Paul Clement.
Wilfried Bony also had a goal disallowed in first-half injury-time and those two moments feel symptomatic of the way things are going for Swansea, even if this was a much-improved performance.
Clement took plenty of encouragement from the way his team played against a Bournemouth side who never really got going and threatened only sporadically, yet the Swansea manager was bitterly upset with Stuart Attwell’s decision to rule out Bony’s goal and critical of the referee’s performance in general. “I thought he had a really poor game and wasn’t up to speed,” Clement said.
He highlighted the moment in the second half when Joshua King’s flailing arm caught Roque Mesa, leaving the Spaniard with a gash across his forehead, but his main bone of contention was the goal Bony had ruled out. Jordan Ayew was the player penalised for a foul on Nathan Aké just before Bony swept the ball into the roof of the net. Swansea’s players were furious and surrounded Attwell when he blew the half-time whistle seconds later.
“I thought at the time it was a soft foul to give,” Clement said. “I think if that was between the two boxes, the game would have carried on. That’s what I saw in real time and I made that point to the referee at half-time, that it was a soft decision. I looked at it on the video and I stand by my first opinion. I think you’ve got a situation where Jordan Ayew and Nathan Aké are fighting for the position as the ball comes in, and I saw Jordan and Aké come together and Aké fall over. I don’t think he’s dived, though – Jordan was too strong for him, he’s outmuscled him. The ball’s come down to Bony, good finish, we should be 1-0 up.”
It was an incident that divided opinion and Eddie Howe was adamant Attwell made the right call. “You’re not going to be surprised I had the opposite view on the disallowed goal,” Bournemouth’s manager said. “I had a good view of it and I thought Nathan was pushed before the goal was scored. The referee blew before the lad struck the ball, which is a good sign he had made a clear decision. It was a foul.”
If there was a reprieve for Bournemouth, it was when Fer inexplicably sliced wide with eight minutes remaining. Cutting in from the left and leaving a trail of defenders in his wake, Fer saw his first shot repelled by Asmir Begovic and then, with the goal yawning invitingly , he somehow failed to convert.
Clement, however, was keen to see the positives from a display in which Swansea played with much more intensity and belief. Bony held up the ball well and Mesa, making only his second Premier League start of the season, justified his inclusion in the centre of midfield.
“That is our best home performance. We’ve not won, but I think there will be other games where we don’t play as well and win,” he said. “If we continue to build on that level, we are going to get out of the trouble we are in, no question about that.”
Howe, in contrast, was “very disappointed” with Bournemouth’s performance and admitted his team “never showed a true representation of our ability”.
Marc Pugh and King had a couple of half-chances before the interval and Charlie Daniels screwed a low shot across the far post in the dying seconds, but otherwise Bournemouth, who should have been full of confidence on the back of recent results, looked a little flat.
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