This season's title race might be all but over, but the relegation battle is still wide open. After three wins in the first five games under new manager Paul Clement, Swansea looked ready to pull away from trouble. Two worrying losses versus relegation rivals Hull City and an underwhelming Bournemouth have put the Welsh club right back in the thick of it.
Now just three points above the drop zone, Swansea must beat visiting Middlesbrough on Sunday to jump-start their survival bid for a second time. Swansea's key to victory will be in rediscovering their scoring touch, having been held to no goals and a single shot on target against the league's third leakiest defence against Bournemouth.
In that game, Clement wanted his side to refocus defensively after a loose display had cost them points against Hull. However, any renewed effort was undermined by injuries and a makeshift back four featuring rusty understudy Stephen Kingsley and midfielder Leroy Fer at full-back still conceded twice.
Against Middlesbrough, Swansea will be facing the league's worst attacking unit and a surprisingly robust defence. Any attempt to play defence first seems destined to produce a goalless draw and a single point will be too little to convince at this stage of the season.
Knowing Boro's attacking woes, Clement needs to trust his defence rather than focus on it and instead corral the attacking potential of his team and go for the throat. His side have home advantage and a psychological edge -- with control over relegation in their own hands. They also have arguably the best attack of all the bottom-six sides.
No other side has a player as decorated as Fernando Llorente -- a World Cup winner presently scoring 0.54 goals per game for Swansea and on course to becoming the club's deadliest-ever Premier League striker. Meanwhile, Gylfi Sigurdsson sits alone atop the Premier League stats charts with 11 assists, a total unmatched even by big-six talents heading into the weekend.
However, Clement will need to look beyond these two obvious star players to get results. Llorente needs service and Swansea have plenty of possible providers on (and waiting in) the wings. Against Bournemouth, the boss' decision to play new man Jordan Ayew on the wing bore no fruit, with the player making little to no real impact. He is skillful and will no doubt have a role to play next season but for the time being, Clement would be better off focusing on proven performers who are more capable of providing Llorente with high balls.
Clement's 4-3-3 system has seen Sigurdsson nominally lining up on the left and in practice actually drifting infield, while Tom Carroll and Martin Olsson combine to provide width instead. Olsson is likely to miss Sunday's match through injury and since Kingsley and Carroll have not yet found the same chemistry, Clement should look to forgotten man Jefferson Montero instead.
The Ecuador international has been missing with an injury of his own of late and has only played a handful of games this season, but is now healthy again. His connection with fellow Spanish-speaker Llorente has already been established. He remains the best producer of the kind of floated high balls only Llorente will reach in Swansea's squad.
Likewise, Luciano Narsingh ought to see action ahead of either Ayew or defensive Wayne Routledge on the other flank. The attacker already has two assists in just 192 minutes of play -- more than Routledge in his 1794 minutes. Narsingh was excellent in his one start against Burnley and it is difficult to fathom why either Ayew or Routledge should be preferred at this point.
The obvious complaint against Montero and Narsingh is that neither player provides much defensive cover, but this is a misconception. True, neither man is likely to make gut-busting runs back into his own third or make too many tackles or blocks, but wing is an offensive position -- why should they be expected to do so? "Total Football" is fine in theory, but positional specialisation still has value.
Montero and Narsingh are weapons, not armour. And by virtue of their vast attacking talents, they do provide a defensive bonus of a sort -- they force the opponents to mark them always, sometimes even double-team them, and that reduces the number of players available to join the opposition attack.
If Clement wants to get Swansea back on track, he needs to be bold in the face of danger, not meek or overly cautious. The points are there for the taking, and this team has been under-performing for almost the whole season. A show of confidence in this side's inherent ability, instead of a game plan predicated on fear and damage limitation, should give the Swansea the confidence necessary to survive the home stretch.