Swansea City 0 Middlesbrough 0
Man of the Match: Ben Gibson (Middlesbrough)
There may be few more predictable outcomes this season. Swansea City were deprived of their top scorer, Fernando Llorente. Middlesbrough are the lowest scorers in English football. A change of manager has not brought a change of scoreline and, for the sixth time this season, one of their games finished goalless.
They are not the great entertainers. Aitor Karanka’s spectre looms large over Middlesbrough and, if his draining defensiveness accounts for their plight, the solidity he has implemented was responsible the result. Swansea dominated but Middlesbrough held out to secure a stalemate. “We are disappointed not to win,” Swansea manager Paul Clement said.
A draw may be ostensibly useful, but it had the feel of an opportunity missed by both teams. Certainly for Swansea, whose three-point cushion on the bottom three disappeared when Hull City won on Saturday, but also for Boro.
A pivotal week of meetings with relegation rivals, with Hull and Burnley next, may offer the prospect of respite but a side with an aversion to winning need to make up ground.
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“You can’t get beat by the teams around you,” said Middlesbrough captain Ben Gibson, but draws are not enough any more.
They are yet to beat anyone in the Premier League in 2017 or to score on the road this year. Both of those statistics could, perhaps should, have changed. Caretaker manager Steve Agnew has tried to be bolder than Karanka but is discovering that attacking intent does not automatically bring incision. Agnew reconfigured Boro in a 4-2-3-1 formation. When Gaston Ramirez went off injured, he paired two target men, in Alvaro Negredo and the substitute Rudy Gestede.
And when the Spaniard bent in an injury-time cross, Gestede, a player who made his reputation with his aerial expertise, rose highest. And headed wide. “The big man is kicking himself,” Gibson said.
Others had a similar response. Goalkeeper Victor Valdes sank to his knees in frustration as Gestede showed why the January signing has gone 39 Premier League games without tasting victory, dating back to his ill-fated spell at Aston Villa.
It showed, too, that Middlesbrough are stripped of confidence in front of goal. They mustered one shot on target, a dink from Negredo that Lukasz Fabianski parried.
Their threat, such as it was, came from the raw pace of Adama Traore, and both Leroy Fer and Alfie Mawson were booked for fouls on the winger. But his finishing is erratic and his best chance was dragged wide. And so, instead, Boro were reliant on one of the five most frugal defences in the division.
“We lacked a bit in the final third,” Clement said. “We peppered their box with set pieces.”
A ploy of crossing may have succeeded had the towering Llorente been fit. Instead an ankle injury kept him out. Jordan Ayew was a smaller, ineffective deputy. Tom Carroll’s first-half thunderbolt hit the stanchion and Swansea showed increasing urgency; with Tottenham Hotspur next, this looked the more winnable game of a double header at home.
Victor Valdes made a fine save from Gylfi Sigurdsson’s curler. The Icelander had a free kick deflected narrowly wide by the arm of Adam Forshaw: referee Bobby Madley ignored Swansea’s appeals for a penalty. Then Fer blazed over in the 89th minute; a game of precious little drama could have produced a winner at either end. But the match scarcely merited one.
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