Midfielder Ki Sung-Yueng has vowed to help turn the Swans’ current form on its head – starting with the visit of Reading to the Liberty Stadium on Saturday (3pm).
A first-half double from Stoke’s giant Peter Crouch at the Britannia Stadium saw Michael Laudrup’s men suffer their third consecutive Barclays Premier League defeat.
But the impressive performance from the South Korean gave Laudrup something positive to take home and into the clash with the Royals.
“The Reading game is very important for us to change the atmosphere,’’ declared Ki. “We can’t afford to lose our home games. We need to win that one to gain confidence.
“I know we lost against Stoke, but we know what we can do when we are on our game.
“I’ve only played four games for Swansea, but I feel I’m getting better and better now that I know the way Swansea play and what I have to do on the pitch. I think there’s more and more to come from me.
“I love this style of football; this is how it should be played, even though sometimes we struggle physically against teams like Stoke.’’
Ki made no excuses for the defeat though, adding: “We’ve lost the last three games without scoring, which is very disappointing. But we still have a lot of games left, so we have to analyse what we did wrong and where we can improve.
“In the first-half we had to deal with a lot of corners and long throws; the physical side of things. We knew they would play a lot of long balls into the box and we didn’t deal well with it. We gave away two goals to Crouch, which was disappointing.
“It’s not always easy to deal with this type of game because they have some big boys, but we still have to improve this area of our game because there are a lot of teams in the Premier League who play like this, especially away games. We have to work on it.
“After we gave the goals away we panicked a bit and couldn’t keep the ball well. We should have had more confidence.
“In the second-half I think we dominated lots of the game. We did much better and played our game, but we still had to score some goals to win the game.
“We have to be sharper and more composed in the attacking third and keep the ball better.’’
And Ki admitted that despite the disappointment in the camp over the defeat, the squad can’t wait to tackle Reading in front of another packed house at the Liberty on Saturday.
“When you lose a game there’s always a lot of people with opinions,’’ he added. “I think we are probably a little bit confused at the moment because we won the first two games and now we are starting to lose. It’s very important we don’t get used to losing.
“But football always changes, and sometimes quickly, so we have to look to change it back in our favour against Reading.’’
Extra tickets for the Reading game have now been made available for general sale online, by phone or in person at the ticket office.