Swansea City: Boss Paul Clement thinks relegation battle will go to the wire

Swansea City have won five of their ten games under Paul Clement

Swansea boss Paul Clement believes the Premier League relegation scrap will be fought until the last set of fixtures.

Clement is hoping to keep the Swans in the top flight despite fact no side has ever conceded over 60 goals after 28 games and survived, with the Swans having already conceded 61.

"It will go to the last day. For sure, there will be one team or two teams who will have the opportunity to stay up on the last day," he explained.

"We have to ensure we are not in that."

Clement says he is not concerned by the statistics that show a defence breached so often are unlikely to remain in the top flight.

"Those statistics have to be beaten at some point and it does not really matter," he said.

"At the moment we are in 16th position, so if the table stopped tomorrow we would have conceded that amount of goals and stayed up.

"There are those about sides who are bottom at New Year, but again if we stopped the table now we would be safe. We have 10 games to go."

Clement is hopeful his side can merely match what they have achieved so far since he succeeded Bob Bradley as he plots the Swans' route to safety.

"If we can replicate anything close to what we did in the last 10 games, I think the outcome will be positive," he confirmed.

"But we all know what that took to do that, how hard it was to get those results, both in the games and in training before.

"The players are mentally prepared to deliver that again. You never know how the opposition will be. Sometimes you can do your best but you can't control a team playing fantastically well or not so well. You've just got to do your best."

Clement says next opponents Bournemouth have hit a bad patch, rather than taking their foot off the gas, but is wary of a recent improvement from the Cherries.

"It's a really hard league and you can hit a bad run at any moment," he said.

"There are lots of teams that have shown that. When you hit a bad run, confidence gets affected and it can be difficult to get out of it.

"But it seems like the result at Manchester United has turned things a little bit for them. It's only a point there, followed up by a win which is four points from two games which is good.

"Now it will be a very hard game against us."