Luke Williams should look to Notts County to end Swansea City's barren run | OneFootball

Luke Williams should look to replicate his former Notts County goalscoring exploits with Swansea City

The month of October 2024 won't be remembered fondly by Swansea City supporters.

Luke Williams' side failed to score a single goal in the five games they played, a hugely concerning statistic, and while they managed to pick up two points thanks to draws with Stoke City and Sheffield Wednesday, you can't win games of football with no goals, obviously.

The Swans have gone 11 halves of football without a goal, and have only scored eight league goals this season, making them the lowest scorers in the division by quite some considerable distance.

This is quite a contrast to Williams' Notts County side, who developed a reputation for being prolific in front of goal, if not the most stable of sides at the back. Swansea are the complete opposites in the sense that they're rock solid at the back, but can't score goals.

Not all the blame can be attributed to Williams as he lacks firepower and goalscorers in his squad, but a simple change may just see Swansea score more goals, and give the Jack Army the football they've been craving.

Swansea have used the 4-2-3-1 most commonly this season, using 4-4-1-1 and 4-3-3 on rare occasions.

None of the formations have proved particularly fruitful going forward for Swansea, and while it's kept them compact and resolute at the back, their goalscoring woes have meant it's time to be brave and make a change.

At Notts County, Williams' side played in a 3-4-2-1, and while that meant they were open and conceded a lot of goals, they did score a lot too.

By no means should Williams rip up the solid defensive base they've established this season, but something needs to be done, and given the success he had with it at Meadow Lane, it would be interesting to see how it would work with Swansea.

You could have Ben Cabango, Harry Darling and Nelson Abbey, Kristian Pedersen or Kyle Naughton as the three central defenders, with Josh Key and Josh Tymon arguably suited to playing as wing-backs anyway, so that wouldn't be a problem.

Matt Grimes and Goncalo Franco would play as the slightly deeper defenders, and then the likes of Ollie Cooper and Liam Cullen, Ronald or Myles Peart-Harris could play in an advanced role, with Zan Vipotnik as the striker.

Whether it would work or not remains to be seen, but it's surely worth a go, and Swansea won't know unless they try.

Given his exploits at Notts County, some Swansea supporters expected a Williams side to be high-scoring but susceptible to concede quite a few, but they're the complete opposite and recent games have had the ability to send the most insomniac supporters to sleep.

You have to sympathise for Williams, who clearly doesn't have the spending power of some Championship managers and can't go and spend millions on proven quality, meaning he's lacking firepower, but something drastic needs to change, and switching to three at the back could be worth a go.

Saturday's trip to Oxford United is Swansea's most important game of the season so far

With no win since the 21st September, and no goal since the 29th September, Swansea's trip to face Oxford United on Saturday is now huge.

Oxford themselves are on a poor run of form and haven't won since the 14th September, and both teams are ever so slowly slipping down the Championship table towards danger.

Both sides will see this game as one that they can realistically get three points from, and if Swansea were to lose and fail to score yet again, pressure would begin to really mount on Williams.

The Swans boss still has the backing of the vast majority of supporters as they made a bright start to the campaign and people realise that he can physically put the ball in the net himself when chances are being created, but this goalless run can't last forever.

Given Swansea's location in South West Wales, the trip to Oxford is actually one of the closest away games they'll have this season, and they'll be backed by a sellout away crowd at the Kassam Stadium, making it feel like an even bigger game.

The travelling supporters will be waiting patiently for 11:30 on Saturday morning to see how their starting XI looks, and they may just hope that Williams has made the bold decision to change to a different formation in a bid to end their goalless run.