Swansea City vs West Bromwich Albion. Sky Bet Championship.
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Report and highlights from the Sky Bet Championship clash at the Liberty Stadium
Saturday 7 March 2020 18:43, UK
West Brom surrendered top spot in the Sky Bet Championship after being held to a 0-0 draw at Swansea.
Slaven Bilic's side failed to find a first-half breakthrough before being put on the back foot for large spells of the second period to allow Leeds to steal a march at the league summit.
Jay Fulton missed a pair of gilt-edged chances that could have given the Swans a valuable victory in the race for the playoffs, but after QPR's victory at Preston, they closed the gap on the top six to three points.
West Brom had former Swan Kyle Bartley and midfielder Romaine Sawyers back in the starting XI in place of Ahmed Hegazi and Rakeem Harper as they made two changes from their last Championship outing.
Aldo Kalulu was brought in as the only change to the Swansea side that drew at Blackburn last weekend after Jordon Garrick was struck down by illness on Friday night.
Only six substitutes were listed on the bench by manager Steve Cooper due to a lengthy injury list, loan restrictions and an outbreak of mumps within the under-23 squad.
For all of West Brom's early dominance, it was Swansea who carved out the best chance of the first 20 minutes after Rhian Brewster nodded a long ball back into the path of Kalulu.
The Liverpool loanee sprinted into the box while the ball was being worked to Andre Ayew on the left flank and would have tucked his cross away if it was not for an intervention from former Swan Bartley.
Ayew then got in the way of a Brewster effort, but from that point on Bilic's men cranked up the pressure to send the Swans further back into their defensive shell.
Hal Robson-Kanu was half a yard away from getting on the end of Callum Robinson's whipped ball, before Matt Grimes lost concentration for a split second.
The Swans midfielder gifted possession to Robinson who fired a low shot towards goal, but Freddie Woodman got a strong hand to the ball to parry the danger away.
After managing to survive until the half-time whistle, the hosts should have been ahead 40 seconds into the second period.
Grimes fired a shot from 25 yards that was parried into the path of Fulton, but the midfielder sliced the rebound over the bar from 12 yards.
He found the stands instead of the net again with another great chance after Sam Johnstone tripped
Conor Gallagher on the edge of the area. Grimes pulled a low cross back for Fulton, but he blazed over again.
After spending large spells defending their own box, West Brom surged forward in search of a late winner.
The best chance fell to Jake Livermore, but the midfielder fired over from 12 yards out to ensure the game ended goalless.
Swansea's Steve Cooper: "We are down a place in the league and a point closer to the play-offs - that sums up the Championship, doesn't it? It's nine games to go, three points away from getting over the dotted line.
"There are worse places to be. I think about some of the teams who are below us who would do anything to be in the position we are in. We are only thinking really positively and we are going for this. We are really going to back ourselves. On another day we could have got more from the game."
West Brom's Slaven Bilic: "It's good to get the clean sheet with a solid performance and to more or less control the game. But we know have to be better in terms of quality in the final third. That's what was missing today.
"That echelon behind Hal Robson-Kanu were not like they usually are. We had 10 shots which is not a lot for us considering the amount of possession we had. The results apart from Leeds and Brentford were OK, the results around you affects the valuation of the point. I would love to be in top spot, but it doesn't worry me. We have one less game to go, the gap is very balanced, it is significant, it is big enough not to panic."
