It's as clear as night and day. For the last 5 weeks ... we have sucked compared to the first month of the season. Although @CroJack has presented data that paints a rosier picture, and I'm a data driven person so I respect that, the data above tells the story about return on effort ..
Well, I don't think we should call the match results 'data'. We all know that we didn't deserve to win 5 out of the first 6 league games. And we definitelly can't compare home games against Cambridge and Northampton with an away game against PL team Watford in the League Cup. As far as I remember we played well against Watford.
The outcomes of the league games we have played should look like this.
The first six games:
Swans - Hull = Win
Derby - Swansea = Draw
Swansea - Preston = Draw or Loss (we won)
QPR - Swansea = Draw or Loss (we won)
Swansea - Birmingham = Win
Leeds - Swansea = Loss (we won)
Total between 7 and 9 points
The last six games:
Swansea - Forest = Draw (we lost)
Bristol - Swansea = Draw
Swansea - Reading = Win (we drew)
Charlton - Swansea = Draw (we won)
Swansea - Stoke = Draw (we lost)
Barnsley - Swansea = Draw
Total 8 points.
What we can see here is that
nothing has changed. We have deserved 8 points from the first 6 games, and 8 points from the last 6. The difference is that we have been lucky in the first 6 games and unlucky in the last 6.
But our performances have been the same. The real output is 8 points for both sequences. And we all know luck evens out during the course of a season.
With a total of 16 points Swans should be in 12th place right now.
So, no, my data don't "paint a rosier picture'. In my opinion you are wrong when you say that we have been really good in the beginning of the season and that we have become really bad when Cooper started playing Ayew. Niether is true. We have been pretty average since the beginning of the season.
In the majority of our games we have played one poor and one good half, and that's something that should be adressed. Against Barnsley we have created 0 big chances in the first and 5 big chances in the second half.
I can see there have been complaints about not attacking down the flanks and streching opposition. Unfortunatelly, that's all what we do. We do attack down the flanks but we are not effective enough. And why is that? Is that because we don't play two dedicated wingers there or something else? The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that it's because we lack support from the centrall and attacking midfield. We don't have the Allen - Gylfi and De Guzman - Michu combination. We don't attack through the middle! Not enough. We do that in patches, but we should threaten all the time from central and attacking midfield. If we do that then it will give more space on the flanks to our wingers and full-backs. But we have to be more adventurous and committ more midfield players when we attack. Especially Fulton has to help attack crosses. He has the height and physicality. With Borja, Ayew and Fulton in the opposition box we can be a real threat from crosses.
There have also been complaints about our wingers Ayew and Celina not helping in defence. That's simply not true. They both work hard constantly running down the flanks. Apart from one game when some of our players looked knackered after international commitments and too many games played, I don't have any complaints about our players work rate. They are all fighting for the shirt. And that's why I am optimistic. We need some tweeks in our style of play, we need more consistency, we need to stop playing sloppy passes in dangerous areas, and we need to erradicate stupid defensive errors, but there are also many positive things that we can be proud of.