UK Edition
Kyle Naughton banned for three games after accepting Football Association charge following Stefano Okaka 'stamp'
Kyle Naughton will miss Swansea City’s next three games after accepting a Football Association charge of violent conduct for stamping on Watford’s Stefano Okaka in a debut victory for Carlos Carvalhal, the Welsh club’s new manager.
It means the right-back will miss Tuesday night’s visit of Tottenham Hotspur to the Liberty Stadium, an FA Cup third-round tie at Wolverhampton Wanderers and the league trip to Newcastle United.
The incident was missed by referee Martin Atkinson but picked up by television cameras and it provoked an angry response on social media. Naughton’s absence will come as a blow to Carvalhal in what was otherwise a satisfactory afternoon. Swansea’s new workaholic manager has had such a frenetic few days that he has not yet had time to talk transfers with his under-fire chairman, Huw Jenkins.
“I don’t even have time to call home, to speak to my family,” said the former Sheffield Wednesday manager. “New club, check the players one by one, prepare the game and analyse the details. Everything in 48 hours – you can imagine how hard this was.”
It worked, eventually. Swansea were limp in the first half and fell behind to Andre Carrillo’s early header. But a stirring half-time team talk did the trick and stung Watford, who have dropped more points from winning positions than any other Premier League team.
“I don’t believe in miracles because miracles are something that belong to divine things. We don’t need a miracle – we need organisation, commitment, belief and to take risks like we did at Watford.”
They also needed, according to striker Oliver McBurnie, “a rocket”.
“He’s an energetic character in the dressing room,” said McBurnie, who laid on the equaliser for Jordan Ayew. “He told the boys exactly what he thought of the first 45 minutes. He said we needed to improve and he was right. Whether it was confidence or application, we did step it up in the second half. It’s not a position anyone wants to be in but, on reflection, maybe we needed that.”
Swansea are still in the relegation zone but Carvalhal now believes “98 out of 100” people are condemning them for the drop, rather than 100. “We can’t get ahead of ourselves – it’s only one win in a long season – but the boss has given us a boost in confidence and gone back to basics,” said McBurnie.
The basics were a 4-4-2 formation, something of an anachronism in the modern day Premier League, and it was a formation that worked particularly well once Nathan Dyer and Luciano Narsingh came off the bench to provide width and pace.
Carvalhal twice took Sheffield Wednesday to the play-offs but failed to win promotion and his appointment has not been greeted with universal approval by supporters who spent much of the game voicing their anger against Jenkins and the board.
The Swansea City Supporters Trust, which owns more than 21 per cent of the club, has been unhappy with the acquisition of Swansea by an American consortium, led by businessmen Steve Kaplan and Jason Levien, and yesterday demanded Jenkins’s removal.