An interesting season of change for Swansea and Cardiff

Local rivals both fear relegation and sacked a manager who has to rank among the finest in their history and appointed a replacement who was untried. That is about where the similarities end.

Cardiff City manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer looks on during their English Premier League soccer match at Cardiff City Stadium in Cardiff, Wales on February 22, 2014. REUTERS/Rebecca Naden

Local rivals often mirror each other. Superficially, Cardiff City and Swansea City have much in common. Both lost at the weekend, conceding four goals apiece. Both, fearing relegation, sacked a manager who has to rank among the finest in their history and appointed a replacement who was untried in the English Premier League.

And there the similarities end. After being beaten by the odd goal in seven, Swansea departed Anfield to a soundtrack of praise.

“A much more difficult game than it would have been three weeks ago,” said Liverpool’s Brendan Rodgers, a former Swansea manager, implying his old club were right to dismiss his successor, Michael Laudrup.

The long-serving captain, Garry Monk, was installed as the interim appointment. He has brought a sense of purpose to a passive team.

His Swansea deserved to beat Napoli on Thursday in the Europa League. When they trailed 2-0 to Liverpool three days later, the assumption was that they might fold meekly. Instead, they rallied superbly. The sense is of a group playing for their caretaker manager.

Monk’s explanation was simple – “good players,” he said several times – but management is more complex than that. He realised that Swansea, topping the passing statistics but sliding down the league, were practitioners of sterile domination and determined to add penetration to their possession. His team look altogether more potent.

“Garry has been thrown in at the deep end,” Rodgers said.

In a sink-or-swim situation, Monk is keeping heads above water.

“He is the guy who can really carry the club forward,” Rodgers said.

It wasn’t simply loyalty to a former lieutenant that prompted the Liverpool manager to champion his case for permanent employment as manager.

A rookie will have to answer questions if he is to flourish in the long term – does he have Laudrup’s contacts and nous in the transfer market? Or the tactical and psychological skills to lift the side if they suffer a slump under his management? But he has an increasingly strong candidature.

The key, perhaps, is that after a decade at Swansea, Monk understands the club and its culture, the players and the playing style. After playing for Laudrup, Rodgers and Roberto Martinez, he has had an enviable education. Crucially, he seems to have learnt at every stage.

Then there is Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, his Cardiff counterpart.

He graduated with honours from the Sir Alex Ferguson school of management, serving as super-sub, senior professional and reserve-team coach at Old Trafford. Yet, plunged into the chaos of Cardiff, he has appeared an innocent abroad.

Like Monk, Solskjaer made scoring more goals a priority. Attacking intent came at a cost, however. Cardiff’s early season success came courtesy of the solidity his predecessor, Malky Mackay, valued. The merits of the safety-first Scot’s pragmatism are increasingly apparent.

Solskjaer’s side, often featuring an extra striker, are way too open and shambolic defensively. Hull City scored four goals with embarrassing ease on Saturday. They were cleverer and more clinical. Cardiff were simply wretched in their heaviest home defeat in 14 years.

Solskjaer’s strategy for stopping opponents seems to consist purely of relying on David Marshall to make world-class saves. In the only games where he has taken points, the 2-1 win over Norwich City and the 0-0 draw with Aston Villa, the Scottish goalkeeper has been in superlative form.

It is scarcely a fail-safe plan, though. Marshall has been in magnificent form this season. He is also left exposed with increasing frequency.

Meanwhile, his manager is left looking naive. Solskjaer’s theories about implementing a passing game and making Cardiff more attacking are admirable. Whether they are advisable in a relegation battle is another matter. So, too, the question of whether the trigger-happy and preposterous owner Vincent Tan would stomach relegation and rebuilding.

A supposed upgrade has not begun well. January’s recruitment drive doubled up as a reunion. Of the seven signings, three are Solskjaer’s fellow Norwegians and four, including two of his compatriots, have spent time at Manchester United. It looks inspired by nepotism, rather than necessity.

Magnus Wolff Eikrem, who played for Solskjaer at Molde, looks too lightweight and ineffectual to control a Premier League midfield. Fabio da Silva has proved a liability in the back four. Striker Kenwyne Jones, a specialist at flattering to deceive, scored on his debut and has rarely looked like adding to his one-goal tally since then.

The borrowed Wilfried Zaha, another who can infuriate with his inconsistency, is discovering his league outings are getting progressively shorter and was hauled off at half-time against Hull.

Perhaps the fundamental difference is that, to borrow Monk’s phrase, he has more good players than Solskjaer. Yet Cardiff’s better performers have deteriorated under the Norwegian, just as Swansea’s underachievers have been revitalised by the Englishman.

While Swansea head to Napoli for the second leg of their Europa League tie, Cardiff cancelled a planned break in Abu Dhabi. That would have seemed too much like a reward for failure. And so local rivals, rather than mirroring each other, actually appear opposites.

Swansea axed a glamorous Scandinavian manager while Cardiff appointed one. Change has benefited the grounded Swans. It threatens to come at a huge cost to the Bluebirds.

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