Scunthorpe Match Preview...

What a long week it has been so far, Going back to school this week was a killer and I've been tired all week, but thankfully Saturday is only 1 sleep away which means another Swans game.

Today I read that Brendan Rodgers won Manager of the month for the month of February, which is great...or is it?

When Martinez was the manager of the swans he won it in January 2009, these are the results of the following 2 months - 

Feb 7 won 3-0 home against Ipswich

Feb 17 Lost 2-0 away against Watford

Feb 21 won 3-1 home against Doncaster

Feb 28 drew 1-1 home against Charlton

Mar 3 drew 2-2 away at Derby

Mar 7 drew 1-1 away at Notts Forest

Mar 10 won 1-0 home against Plymouth

Mar 14 lost 1-3 home against Palace

Mar 17 lost 1-0 away at QPR

Mar 21 drew 0-0 away at Sheff Wed.

Not great, 13 points out of 30...hopefully this won't happen, i hope we don't get cursed by the manager of the month!

I'm kidding by the way, i seen that on 606 and laughed. 

But anyway, As we go on and on into the season and the end draws closer i feel every game is getting all the more important, so  we need to win all of our games, or atleast get a draw. 

Here i have some facts off the bbc website- 

Npower Championship

Venue: Glanford Park Date: Saturday, 5 March Kick-off: 1500 GMT

Coverage: Watch highlights on The Football League Show; Listen on BBC Radio 5 live and BBC local radio; text commentary on the BBC Sport website

TEAM NEWS

Scunthorpe United will again be without defender Paul Reid, who has a rib injury, while striker Chris Dagnall is still absent with a knee problem.

Goalkeeper Joe Murphy and right-back Cliff Byrne are out with ankle and back injuries respectively.

Swansea are still without midfielder Andrea Orlandi (thigh) and skipper Garry Monk (knee), but both players are set to return to training next week.

Tom Butler is training again after a thigh injury, but will not play yet.

MATCH PREVIEW

In-form Swansea City have enjoyed four consecutive league wins and have won their last three away matches. It is that kind of form that has moved them into second place - five points behind leaders Queens Park Rangers.

Not even QPR have won more games this season than the Swans, who have notched an unrivalled 19 Championship victories. They are also the division's top scorers in 2011, and beating Scunthorpe would see them become the first team in the second tier this term to register nine away wins.

Scunthorpe are involved in a battle at the opposite end of the table. They are third from bottom, have suffered back-to-back 2-0 defeats, and have lost eight and won only two of their last 12 league matches.

United have failed to score in eight of those games, which underlines how badly they have struggled. But Swansea are unlikely to underestimate them in light of The Iron's recent shock win against promotion chasers Nottingham Forest.

MATCH FACTS

Head-to-head

• Swansea have won 26 and Scunthorpe 21 of the 60 previous meetings between these clubs.

• The last three encounters have been won by Swansea, who have scored seven goals in the process and conceded none.

Scunthorpe

• Scunthorpe have lost more Championship matches than any other club (20), drawn the fewest (four), failed to score in most (16) and opened the scoring in fewer games (11).

• They also have the division's worst home record, having lost nine and won only three of their 16 league matches at Glanford Park.

Swansea

• Swansea have kept 19 clean sheets this season, collecting a total of 47 points from those matches.

• A win would leave City with 29 away points - as many as they picked up during the whole of last season.

• Alan Tate is in line for his 300th start for Swansea, and Joe Allen his 100th appearance for the club.

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So probably the most important fact in that is that in the past 3 against Scunthorpe we have won al 3, scoring 7 goals, so i don't want to jinx the Swans but i really think this shouldn't be a hard game for us to easily win. 

With all due respect to Scunthorpe, and i wish them good luck to stay in the Championship but with them in 22nd it shouldn't be a hard game, but Swansea never take the easy way.

This is what i want tommorows team to look like - 

De-Vries

Angel Rangel - Ashley Williams - Alan Tate - Neil Taylor

Joe Allen - Darren Pratley

Nathan Dyer                     Stephen Dobbie                 Scott Sinclair

Luke Moore

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Dobbie has been brilliant in the past couple of games and has played a huge part in the last 3 wins, He has started to turn alot more and go forward which is what i really wanted him to do.

He has been linking up well with Dyer alot and they have both shined from it, him and Luke Moore work well together and i think they can both become out main strikers and even good enough from the premiership with the support of Sinclair and Dyer.

As you all know Dobbie was a big part in Blackpool's promotion to the Premiership last year after he fell out with Paulo Sousa and got sent on loan - Biggest mistake of the season.

So if Tate plays tommorow it will be his 300th game for the Swans.

This year he has been criticised heavily for his performances on the pitch which i think is unjustified.

When we played Leyton Orient and he scored that own goal, instantly people were blaming him for the whole loss, it was so frustrating because it wasn't just him who lost the game for us, we should have scored so many more goals and done so much more better defensively the whole game.

Last year while Rangel was injured Tate played in the right back position to cover him, I loved it when he played that role because he played it so well, he attacked alot and linked up with the central midfielders and the Wingers, which was great.

So to conclude, I think tommorow the Swans should easily win the game with a 2-3 Nil win!

Prediction-

Swansea 3-0 Scunthorpe

Moore x 2, Sinclair

Reflecting...

So I didn't post after the game against Coventry, i tried but i was to lazy to be honest, it wasn't a thrilling game so there wasn't alot to say so i left it out, but after todays game i thought it would be necessary to talk about the game.

So originally i didn't plan on going to the game to be honest as i was doing a charity event, but it was outside and around the stadium so i decided to go, i went to the ticket office and got a free ticket because someone wasn't able to go and gave their ticket in, so that was kind of a good omen i guess.


I had doubts going into the game because Leeds are a good team, and they still are and will be promotion contenders, but we made them look average. Getting an early goal was crucial in this game because it gave us the confidence to go on and get more goals and attack.

Sinclair got the goal in the 13th minute, and what a goal it was! The Partnership's that are being formed around the squad are showing in the game, after all this time it feels that the squad have really gelled together and are showing good signs that may be the difference between promotion contenders and the rest.


I want to say that was Sinclairs 13th of the season, i got that off BBC but they have a track record of being very VERY unreliable so i'm not going to say it was, but Sinclair has been amazing for us this season and has really probed any critics wrong.


With Sinclair doing so well i ask the question, is a new striker even necessary?  Since Scotland left us we have been searching for the striker that can score week in week out, but i think we have found that person in Scott Sinclair, the only difference being his that he doesn't play up front.

So after Nathan Dyer got man of the match today - which i might add he deserved after his amazing performance, i thought i would talk about my opinions on him.


Now, my brother loves Dyer and thinks he is one of the best and unrecognised players that we have, and i agree with him, Dyer does so much for the squad but it seems like he is never recognised or that he doesn't do anything because it is very rare for him to appear on the score sheet.


His runs he makes at defenders are lethal and really cause trouble for any defences and that was proved today by winning us a penalty, i think that Dyer needs to continue making runs into the box and forcing the defenders to make tackles which will hopefully result in free kicks, corners and of course penalties, which means more opportunities to score.


So at the moment we sit 2nd in the league, 5 points behind QPR and 1 point ahead of Cardiff, should i dare to mention the "P" word, because i think as time goes on and we continue to win more games it is becoming alot more realistic that we will be playing football with the likes of Chelsea,Arsenal, Man Utd and hopefully Cardiff next year.


Alot of people have said that they would like to see Cardiff go to the Premiership aswell as Swansea, and i agree, it would be fantastic to see 2 Welsh teams representing Wales in the Premiership, it would do wonders for Welsh football, and it would also make for brilliant South Wales derbys!


So as the season draws to a close and we begin to really think we can get promoted, it feels like there is a sense of true believe between to fans and the players, if we do not go up this season, i think it is the biggest opportunity missed for a very long time, because the likes of Ash Wills,Pratley and Dorus will be most probably sold to a premier league side, because they are all out of contract.


I mentioned i was doing a charity event earlier on, Me and alot of other people were raising money for Marie Curie Cancer Care, we went around Morfa Retail Park collecting money and giving out daffodills, overall the day was fantastic and we raised over £700 for charity, which is amazing, this was all made possible because of an organisation called AGSwansea, Below are some links to check out to learn more, and perhaps get involved in some of the upcoming events.


http://www.agswansea.org
http://www.twitter.com/AGSwansea


Well that's about it for this mostly Swansea related post, if i'm honest i'm probably going to stop posting about Gaming because i simply don't do it that much any more, and if i do it's only Fifa.


So Thanks for reading this far!


Thanks, Jamie.

The Weekend That Was....

So i've just woken up, 12:45 I woke up to be precise, but that's ok because it is half term. I thought I  would try my first "proper" blog post about the weekends football, so here goes.

I'm a Swansea city fan, so most weeks I will be talking about Swansea, Swans were playing Doncaster this week so check out the following highlights.   

Swansea Vs Doncaster

A pretty straight forward win for the Swans, by the time they got the first goal it because more about how many we would score, we could have scored so many more as well.

I read BBC 606 allot, and on there you will always find talk about how we need a "Big Striker" who can score week in and week out, although I do agree with that on a certain level I think at the moment we are doing fine.

With Luke Moore scoring as well this could be the start of him scoring, it took him 7-8 games to score but now that he has I really hope that he starts scoring alot me, perhaps he could be the answer to the "Big Striker" question.

Although it may not seem like it, this was probably one of the most important fixtures of the season, not because of the team we were playing but because of the other teams around us fixtures. 

This is how the table stands at the moment.

                      Games   GD    Points

1 QPR          32      31 61

2 Forest       31      16 56

3 Swansea  32      14 56

4 Cardiff      32      13 55

5 Norwich    32      10 55

6 Leeds        32      10 53

As you can tell, QPR are quite far ahead, and I personally think they will run away with the league and win it. I think that Swansea can finish 2nd, but it's not going to be easy.

With Cardiff loosing to Forest and Norwich and Leeds Drawing it was exactly what we wanted, pushing us up to 3rd!

I don't follow premier league teams that much, because I prefer the lower leagues, but it was the FA Cup this weekend so I thought I would talk about the 2 biggest games.

Chelsea Vs Everton

Unfortunately I couldn't find any highlights for this, I checked Youtube and BBC but nothing.

From the start I thought it was going to be a close game, and I wasn't wrong. Going to extra time and Chelsea getting a goal I thought it was over. Baines scored in the 119th minute to put it to penalties. Everton won 4-3 on penalties.

I wasn't overly surprised by the result, but it was a little bit unexpected. Obviously this is a huge win for Everton, not just progressing in the cup but for the whole team, this will probably give them confidence in the league as well.

Over the past couple of months Chelsea have lost and drawn some big games which they should have won, Including - Fulham,Wolves,Birmingham and Sunderland. In my notes I titled this section "The Demise Of Ancelotti" That may be a bit drastic, but he could be leaving Chelsea soon.

With Chelsea being top a couple of months ago, they have thrown the league away and are now 5th, for Chelsea, 5th is simply not good enough, so come the end of the season I am doubtful Ancelotti will be at the club. 

I had planned to talk about the Arsenal v Leyton Orient game, but this has dragged on more than expected so I'm going to leave that one out and call this one to an end. 

Thanks for reading this far, Hope you enjoyed my first "proper" post, my next one will be on Thursday about the Champions League results, or I may post one tommorow about some Gaming but it all depends.

Thanks,Bye!

Jamie

Welcome..

After hours of trying to get this site up and running I have finally done it. I tried a few other hosting sites before coming to Blogger, I'm happy with the way the site runs and looks, posting is simple and it's pretty easy to add widgets and what not.

First things first I guess I will tell you some things about me, for most of you this will be irrelevant because you have probably come here from my Facebook or Twitter, but if you have somehow stumbled upon this then i guess this will help you.

Name - Jamie Thomas

Age - 14

Hometown - Swansea

Interest's - Football, Gaming, Graphic Design, The Internet.

I guess that's the most important stuff to know about me, but i'm sure after time you will learn more.

So what's the point of this site then, well a few thing to be honest. I will mostly be talking about Football and Gaming, but sometimes I will go off on a rant, I guess this site is mostly to let out anger and to bitch and moan about life.

The name Game-Time was thought up by my brother, considering the blog is about Football and Gaming, Game-Time is quite a good time because it's relevant to Gaming in the way it has "Game" in the title, but it is also very relevant to Football because "Game Time" is when a football match is going on...pretty nifty I thought.

I'll be posting once or twice a week discussing any Gaming news or looking back on the Football results, but for now I guess I have said enough.

If you want to know when I have posted the best place is to probably follow me on Twitter, you can do so by going to the following link http://www.twitter.com/thejamiet567 or there is a nifty widget to the right where you can do so.

Well that's about it for now, New post tommorow talking about the weekends football.

Thank's for reading, Bye!

Jamie