The Swans draw their Boxing Day fixture at Reading but remain in the play off positions

Report - myswans.co.uk

THE festive season didn't make Paulo Sousa jolly, but the first half of the football season ought to raise a smile.

Sousa was left grumbling about referees after Swansea City's Boxing Day draw at Reading.

Yet at the midway point of his first Swansea campaign, the Portuguese has plenty to be happy about.

With 23 league games played in the Championship — give or take the odd one for those teams who have been hit by bad weather or dodgy undersoil heating — Swansea sit pretty in sixth.

It is a position which might even have been bettered had they shown more finishing class, because Swansea have often had teams on the ropes but failed to send them tumbling.

But it is also a position which few, if any, anticipated at the start of the season and one which Sousa can look at with some pride.

Remember the mood in these parts after Roberto Martinez wandered off to Wigan in the summer?

Remember the gloom which followed when he came back to the Liberty to pick off a clutch of Swansea's prize assets?

And remember the growing concern as Sousa's Swansea started the new campaign in spluttering form which brought only eight points from their first nine league games?

The manner of Martinez's exit, in particular, will live long in the memory for Swansea, but the worries it prompted now seem a thing of the past.

After the awkward opening, the Sousa era boasts plenty of promise. The former Queens Park Rangers manager never got a proper chance to make his mark at Loftus Road, but he is stamping his style on the Liberty.

Okay, so watching Swansea this term has not always guaranteed thrills and spills. A tally of 40 goals — 21 for, 19 against — in their league fixtures to date tells you that.

But Sousa's priority is to deliver points rather than to keep people entertained and a return of 36 at this stage will do very nicely.

Alan Tate admitted last week that Swansea's achievements so far in 2009-10 had been greater than he expected.

Those in the boardroom would echo that view having spoken of what a difficult season it might be back in August.

Martinez pulled the rug from under Swansea's feet when he departed, but Sousa has them standing tall once more.

"I am pleased with how things are going," the Swansea boss said ahead of today's meeting with Crystal Palace.

"It's easier to work when you are near the top of the table. It means you are not under pressure so we can work with more confidence."

Sousa is right — the weight of expectation which can trouble teams is not a problem for Swansea just now.

Their efforts so far have been a pleasant surprise and, should they stick around the play-off places through until May, their supporters will be delighted.

An exact repeat of their form so far would be fine, for 72 points would give them a decent chance of a place in the top six.

Then Swansea would be three matches from the Premier League, and that would be a remarkable outcome to a season which began like a relegation battle.

Sousa would argue his team would have been a couple of points closer to the play-offs this morning had Mike Russell not been in charge of their visit to Reading.

Swansea's manager moaned like Mark Hughes at Old Trafford earlier this season as fingers were pointed towards the referee's room on Saturday evening.

"It's something I don't want to talk about too deeply," said Sousa, presumably trying to avoid any trouble with the Football Association of Wales.

"But once more we saw bad decisions against us.

"Referees are an important part of the game. They need to be at the same level as the two teams and I hope they can get better and better because it's so important. They need to help the game be better.

"There were (refereeing) mistakes made in the game which cost us points. There was a balance in the game between the teams, but that was because of bad decisions.

"If it wasn't for the bad decisions, we would have been comfortable."

The argument was not crystal clear, for Sousa declined to go into much detail about where he thought Russell had got it wrong.

But the stoppage-time debate — sparked by Sparky after the Manchester derby — was almost inevitable given that Reading's goal came in the 48th minute of the first half.

Moments earlier, the fourth official had indicated that only one minute should be added on to the first 45.

"It was almost two minutes and 40 seconds when the goal was scored, but there are other people who have to care about that," Sousa muttered.

Swansea may have been unfortunate, but it is fairly standard procedure for referees to allow time for set-pieces to be taken once they have been awarded whatever is left on the clock.

Sousa's team might have done a better job of shutting the first period down before Gylfi Sigurdsson, who had been tripped by Nathan Dyer just outside the penalty area, curled a free-kick over the wall and beyond the helpless Dorus de Vries.

Swansea had taken the lead 12 minutes earlier, Angel Rangel dancing forward and acting as playmaker in a fine move which ended with Darren Pratley crunching a left-foot shot beyond Adam Federici.

Dyer had earlier forced a smart save from Federici, while Gorka Pintado was twice denied a first of the season by the Australian in Reading's goal.

Lee Trundle, bringing added threat as a late substitute, beat Federici but saw the effort chalked off because Pratley had been flagged offside earlier in the move.

So Swansea might have won it — but they could have left with nothing too. Sigurdsson, twice, and Jimy Kebe were repelled by de Vries on a day when the visitors were short of their best.

In the end the draw was a decent result — even if Sousa didn't appear especially pleased about it.

Photo: Action Images

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