Your Swansea City headlines for Tuesday, April 12.
Dike lauds Guehi after Swans impact
Daryl Dike has described Marc Guehi as the hardest player he's come up against in his career so far, following his encounters with the defender during last season's Championship play-offs.
Dike - now with West Brom - was unable to threaten for Barnsley in the first leg of the play-off semi-final encounter with Swansea at Oakwell last May, with Steve Cooper's men winning 1-0 courtesy of an Andre Ayew strike. Guehi produced an excellent display and took the man-of-the-match award, with Dike then starting the second leg on the bench.
Guehi was once again excellent as Swansea reached the final following a 2-1 aggregate win over Barnsley in the semi-finals, although they went on to lose to Brentford at Wembley. But American forward Dike lavished praise on the England international - who joined Crystal Palace from Chelsea last summer - after their clashes in the second tier last season.
"I see it on social media all over the place, people saying 'you got pocketed in the play-offs'," Dike said on TikTok. "The hardest person I played against is Marc Guehi. That dude is so annoying.
"I would get by him, I'd run by him and the next thing I know, he's in front of me again. I'm like 'how did you just get here?'.
"Every time I went somewhere on the field, that dude was there. He's genuinely one of the nicer people I've ever played against. He'd knock me over, pick me up and we had conversations and laughs in the game.
"But, bro, he is so good. I saw him get his move to Palace. It makes sense. I see him doing well. That dude pocketed me last season."
Grimes' long-term hope
Matt Grimes is confident that Swansea City will continue to improve under the current regime beyond this season.
The Swans have had an inconsistent campaign under Russell Martin, although they have collected 13 of the last 15 points on offer to surge towards the top half of the Championship table. With just six matches left to play, Martin's men are determined to finish the season strongly to ensure they can hit the ground running in the 2022/23 campaign.
And captain Grimes - who signed a new contract with the club in November - is fully confident that Swansea are only going to get better given their style of play.
"This is, and you hear this a lot, a building process," said the midfielder. "We've shown this season how good we can be, and there's no getting away from the fact that we've shown how poor we can be.
"But it's just finding the middle ground and making sure our performances are as consistent as possible and making sure the gap between being very good and being very bad is not so big.
"It's obviously going to take time. The more time we've had to work on it, you see the outcomes and the way we've been playing - it is a long-term process. It's not going to be a quick fix.
"It's making 22 players, staff and the whole club and city buy into something the manager is doing, and that is implementing this style. It's going to take time.
"I think we've shown already this season just how well we can play and what we can do to teams playing in this way. I think it's only going to get better and better."
Where will Swansea finish in the league this season? Have your say in the comments section below.
Run-in aim
Swansea City have just six matches left to play this season.
The Swans play Barnsley, Middlesbrough, Bournemouth and Queens Park Rangers on home soil while they also travel to Reading and Nottingham Forest before the final day of the regular season on May 7. Barnsley are nine points adrift of safety ahead of their trip to south Wales on Friday.
And Martin believes the pressure on other teams who are fighting at both ends of the table could take its toll over the final stages of the campaign.
"It's going to be tough," said the head coach on his side's run-in. "Another team [Barnsley] that are going to come here and try to make it really hard for us. We have a little bit of recovery time now which is nice.
"Hopefully we can perform with the energy we played with this week, especially the first two games [Cardiff and Millwall]. I think we're playing a lot of teams with a lot to play for.
"Barnsley, Reading, we've got Forest and Bournemouth in there as well. QPR, I don't know where they're going to be at that point.
"We have some really tough games, games to be excited about against people with a bit of pressure on them and that changes things a little bit, so I'm excited about it."
Kick-off against the Tykes is at 3pm on Good Friday.
