Swansea vs West Brom match report: Ki Sung-yueng strikes to give managerless Swans a much needed boost
Swansea 1 West Brom 0
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Your support makes all the difference.Relief for Swansea but frustration for West Bromwich and their manager Tony Pulis, who was left bemoaning two penalty decisions he felt had gone against his side.
Ki Sung-yueng’s ninth-minute strike was enough to give caretaker manager Alan Curtis his first win at the helm, and end Swansea’s four-month wait for a home victory.
Pulis was furious that referee Roger East had not awarded his side spot-kicks for Angel Rangel’s challenge on Chris Brunt and Leon Britton’s tackle on Callum McManaman.
The first looked a clear penalty as Rangel got nowhere near the ball and brought Brunt down, with East only awarding a corner.
However, the second claim did not appear anywhere near as strong given McManaman had started to go to ground before getting as far as Britton.
But Pulis, still carrying a sense of grievance from recent games, was utterly exasperated.
“The first one is a stonewall penalty. The lad actually goes for the ball but Chris just touches it away, and he goes through him,” he said.
“And then Callum, we’ve seen that again and the lad catches him “We had a penalty given against us last week against Bournemouth which is outside the box, two today that we should have had, two against Leicester that we should have had, and I am really disappointed.
“There is no way, if there was any justice, that we should be coming away from this place with no points.” Not that Curtis and Swansea were all that bothered as they edged a contest low on quality thanks to Ki’s strike.
Andre Ayew and Wayne Routledge linked with Rangel down the right to send the full-back scurrying into the West Bromwich area.
The Spaniard’s shot beat Boaz Myhill but struck the post and rebounded against the prostrate goalkeeper. As the former Wales international scrambled to try to get a grip on the ball, Ki arrived to tap home. It may have been ugly, but it was enough to lift the Swans out of the bottom three, and Curtis hailed the character of his players.
“We can play better, and we have done the last couple of games, but we showed a different side to our game. We showed character and worked unbelievable hard,” he said.
“You have to find a way to win, it was not very pretty, it was not a typical Swansea performance in that respect. But we had enough to get over the line for the three points we deserved.”
Swansea: (4-2-3-1) Fabianski; Rangel, Fernandez, Williams, Taylor; Britton (Shelvey, 90), Ki; Routledge (Barrow, 88), Sigurdsson, Montero (Cork, h-t); Ayew.
West Bromwich: (4-1-4-1) Myhill; Dawson, McAuley, Olsson (Berahino, 59), Brunt; Evans; Gardner (Sessègnon, 59), Fletcher, Yacob (McManaman, 81), Morrison; Lambert.
Referee: Roger East.
Man of the match: Britton (Swansea)
Match rating: 4/10
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