Swansea City head coach Russell Martin insists his team are much better than they were 18 months when he walked through the door at Fairwood.
Yesterday saw Swansea go down to defeat to Blackburn at Ewood Park, the same venue where Martin took charge of his first game of his new club around a year and a half ago.
On that day Swansea were comprehensively swept aside by Rovers. The latest fixture in Lancashire had a frustratingly familiar feel to it, with yet another late goal consigning Swansea to defeat.
That's just three wins in 18 games now for a team who were once flirting with the play-offs. They are still just seven points off the top six, but consistency appears to be their Achilles heel.
Martin cut a frustrated figure in his post-match press conference but pointed to the metrics when asked about his team's performance and evolvement, insisting things have improved markedly.
"They are (metrics improved), you see it as well," he said. "It's not a contentious thing. I can deliver a Marcelo Bielsa presentation if you really want. It's a fact, it's not a lie. Whatever people see with their eyes, whatever we see with our eyes, we feel it and we see the team is better.
"The young players we have are better than where they were 18 months ago. The established players are better than where they were 18 months ago, because of the amount of work they put in. That's not an opinion, it's a fact. The rest will follow, the results will follow. But we still have so many players who are learning the game at this level, learning what it takes to win and win a lot. That's where we are at. I'm learning, we are all learning. We want to win more, we want to win more consistently. But we have to appreciate where we are at."
Martin believes his players will benefit from experiences such as Saturday and referenced the problem in Swansea's building project, stating they keep losing "a lot of the foundations" therefore having then to restart the process.
It's not just the youngsters who have improved, with senior players also benefiting from guidance over the last year and a half, the head coach believes.
"The team is better in every metric than when we played here 18 months ago or whenever it was when we first walked into the building," he added.
"The team is much better than it was at the end of last season, albeit with very different players. I think the frustrating thing for us is we are building something, at times it is really brilliant, like the first half today. The second half is difficult.
"The young guys will be much better for that experience this time in a year's time, six months' time, three months' time, in the next game, we have to try to piece it together again and put the first half and second half together.
"But the team is much better, in our performance, the chances it gives up, although we concede too many goals, the chances we have, the amount of goals we score, the amount of control we have, on the majority, albeit today was a bit different second half.
"But we're not building a block at a time; we build, then we lose a lot of the foundations. Then we have to build again. I just got asked a question out there: 'It's 18 months now, have you progressed?' Yeah, we have. The team is fundamentally miles better than it was when we walked in.
"The players are a lot better for us now than they were 18 months ago in this style of football in terms of what they produce on the pitch, Jay Fulton, Matt Grimes, all these people. But it's not like we are keeping this group then adding one or two every now and again.
"Because when you are able to do that, the results will improve and a be a bit more consistent than they are now. But we're not. We still have a back three that's two new players who have never played at that level this season, Harry (Darling) and Woody (Nathan Wood), who were great today. Them three and Ben (Cabango) defended brilliantly, I thought.
"People will say 'ah, that's an excuse' and all that stuff, it's not. It's the facts. It's the truth. I got asked out there, will people be patient and stuff. I have to be patient. So I hope people understand that. And if they're not and just want to win and all that stuff, we're also not in that position where we can go and get loads of players who are ready-made for the Championship and just play Championship football and win.
"We'll keep building,.today is really frustrating, it's another chance to learn. It's unacceptable, the goal that we concede. So yeah, we'll keep building."
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