Paul Clement has told his Swansea City players they need to toughen up as the stress of another relegation battle begins to take its toll.
The Swans manager will send his team into a Carabao Cup tie against Manchester United on Tuesday night on the back of wretched home form that he concedes is eroding self-belief.
Saturday’s 2-1 defeat to Leicester City was the club’s fourth home loss in five matches, a trend of failure at the Liberty Stadium that will send the club down unless it can be quickly reversed.
The Cup tie offers an opportunity for Clement’s players to repair their own morale without the risk of losing any more Premier League points and the manager has promised to make changes.
But he also knows there has to be a change in their own minds and says: “At the moment there are obviously some confidence issues and players aren’t playing as well as they can do.
“It’s up to me and all the players to be mentally tough in times of difficulty. I’ve got a good squad of players but all the players know that at this level they all have to perform close to their potential if we’re going to get a good performance and a result.
“I think – based on some of the performances going back eight or nine games – it’s time for some other players to have some opportunity. So I’m thinking about doing that on Tuesday.”
Clement issued a less than robust defence of his players when he was asked whether the club have adequately replaced Gylfi Sigurdsson and Fernando Llorente, their two most influential performers during their escape from relegation last season who both left in August.
He added: “My job is to work with the players that I’ve got here. There’s no point whinging or moaning about what I have or haven’t got.
“I’ve got this group of players, I have belief in them. I can’t say that I don’t. Last week I was really pleased with what they did. This week, I’m not so pleased.
“They sat in the dressing room for 10 minutes in silence waiting for me, they know that they can do a lot better. It’s another missed opportunity. We’ve got to keep working at it, there’s nothing else we can do.”
It is curious, though, that if Clement is entirely convinced over Roque Mesa, to ponder over a squad sheet that does not include the Spaniard’s name after his £11m move from Las Palmas.
Mesa played 36 matches in La Liga last season, but has managed only three Premier League games so far and has not figured since the defeat at West Ham.
Equally baffling is the form of another player who is getting time on the field – Bayern Munich loanee Renato Sanches.
A year ago, the Portuguese midfielder was one of the most exciting young talents in Europe but his personal self-belief appears to have drained away during his time in Germany and no amount of gentle nurturing from Clement seems to have restored things.
Most of the time Sanches resembles a raw reserve, drowning at a level way above his head, rather than a man who helped drive his team to glory at last year’s Euro 2016 finals.
Clement, though, remains optimistic – as he has to be with 29 Premier League matches still to play and 87 points still to play for.
“If we get the performance right, I’m sure the result will follow like it did against Huddersfield. If you look at the table, it’s so tight – bottom position right up to 9th and 10th.
“If we can start putting together some consistency in our game, then we can find ourselves in a totally different region of the table.
“There have been too many marginal defeats for us in the first nine games. There are three-quarters of the season left and we have to dig in.”