West Brom 3 - 1 SwanseaWest Brom’s Salomón Rondón swamps Swansea City with headed hat-trick
Home team scorersJose Salomon Rondon 50
Jose Salomon Rondon 61
Jose Salomon Rondon 63
Away team scorersWayne Routledge 78
Salomón Rondón scored a second-half hat-trick of headers to keep West Bromwich Albion airborne in the Premier League and Swansea flapping near the foot of the table. It was the Venezuela international’s first three-goal haul for his club and took his tally to the season to seven from 15 league matches, an excellent strike rate for a player who often fulfils a lonely role up front in a team that is not always minded to attack.
Albion’s ambitions are growing, however, and this win propelled them back to seventh in the table.
Tony Pulis’s evening was sullied a tad when Wayne Routledge struck to deny Albion a clean sheet, but that detail could not take too much lustre off a highly satisfying win for the hosts. Nor could it console the visitors, who had arrived hoping to secure back-to-back victories for the first time under Bob Bradley but departed knowing that they had not bared their teeth until it was too late.
The frustration for the American manager was that his team finished strongly and started quite solidly but lost because they unravelled for a spell after half-time. “There was a 13-minute stretch where we seemed to lose our way,” admitted Bradley. It was during that stretch that Rondón put the match beyond Swansea’s reach.
The salvo was all the more welcome for Rondón because he had squandered Albion’s only two clear chances in the first period. After a quarter of an hour he was denied by Lukasz Fabianski but the striker was visibly annoyed with himself for making a save possible, his effort from 10 yards placed too close to the goalkeeper and undoing splendid preparatory work by Matt Phillips and James Morrison. Later in the half he was sent clear again but did not get his shot away fast enough, allowing Alfie Mawson to make a terrific block.
At that stage Swansea were well in the game. But the visitors’ nimble moves, orchestrated by the ever-wonderful Leon Britton, tended to fizzle out before reaching the opposing box. That meant they failed to test an Albion defence that was missing two of its stalwarts, with Jonny Evans injured and Craig Dawson suspended. Swansea’s only notable shot in the first half came from a predictable source: a free-kick by Gylfi Sigurdsson. The Icelander curled his shot over the wall from 20 yards but straight into the arms of Ben Foster.
As the first half wore on the tide turned on the Swans and they were grateful to make it to half-time with the scoreboard blank. The reprieve, though, only seemed to lull them into negligence.
Fabianksi, in fairness, remained alert. He made an urgent intervention within 50 seconds of the resumption, bounding off his line to snaffle the ball at the feet of Nacer Chadli. But Swansea’s defenders were sleep-walking and conceded three goals in 13 minutes. The first came five minutes into the half, when Phillips swung in a free-kick from the right and Rondón stole a march on his markers to head powerfully into the net from eight yards. Mawson jumped up and down in impotent anger but Swansea would need to channel their frustration into something more constructive to draw level.
They did not. Albion threatened to widen the gap just before the hour, but Phillips could not match Rondón’s heading prowess when presented with an opportunity by Darren Fletcher. Two minutes later Rondón gave another demonstration of the art, expertly steering a header into the bottom corner from a cross by Chris Brunt. Again Swansea’s defenders had done nothing to deter him.
Their inattention amounted to encouragement. So Rondón wasted no time completing his hat-trick, nodding powerfully home from 12 yards from another delivery by Brunt.
“It was a wonderful hat-trick,” said Pulis. “He’s getting better. He finds it very difficult sometimes to understand how hard every game is in the Premier League. He was up and down last year but he’s been more consistent this year. And the great thing about this match is that he missed two great chances in the first half and it hasn’t affected him.”
Swansea only came back to life when it was too late. In the 78th minute the substitute Modou Barrow made the sort of jagged run that they had been lacking. It led, thanks partly to a misjudgement by Olsson, to Routledge slamming the ball into the net from 12 yards. Foster then made a fabulous reflex save in stoppage time to prevent a cross from cannoning off Gareth McAuley for an own goal.
“There was a spell late on when we actually played some decent stuff,” said Bradley. “But one of the most important things that we have to be able to improve is that if we do go behind, we have to be able to get back into the game, string some passes together, not panic or lose concentration or belief. That’s the part that gets me angry.”
Guardian