Steve Cooper: Boss says Swansea won't 'hide away' from criticism
- Published
Former England Under-17s boss Steve Cooper took charge of Swansea in 2019
Steve Cooper insists Swansea City will not give up on automatic promotion or "hide away" from criticism as they look to recover from their current slump.
Four straight defeats - and four games without a goal - have left the Swans 10 points adrift of the Championship's top two with seven games left this season.
Even a play-off place is not assured, with seventh-placed Bournemouth now only four points behind Swansea.
"We've just got to get back to winning games, and it's hard," said Cooper.
"But success isn't easy. We have to take the criticism, understand we're not in a very good moment but get through it.
"We won't be hiding away from it - I certainly won't.
"We won't give up on above but the top two picking up a lot more points than us makes that difficult.
"You've got to get through the rocky periods, and are we going through a difficult period? Absolutely. I'm not dressing that up.
"But we've got to get through it."
Monday's home defeat against Preston was Swansea's fourth in succession, and the second in the space of three days in which they had conceded an injury-time winner.
The manner of the performance was as concerning as the result, with the Swans failing to register a single shot on target against a Preston side who started the game 17th in the table.
"There's no goals in four games. There were no shots on target but there were blocks and you've got to be careful with stats but still we're not looking enough like scoring," said Cooper.
"We changed the shape, tried to get some width with offensive players. There were little glimpses of what we wanted it to look like in the second half but certainly not enough.
"I'm not dressing it up, I'm not making excuses, we're falling short at the top end of the pitch.
"And it's not just the attacking players, it's the whole team."
Swansea's attacking shortcomings have been laid bare during this losing run but, earlier this season, those weaknesses were offset by a formidable defensive record.
When the Swans beat leaders Norwich to reclaim second place in February, they were on course to break the Championship record for clean sheets.
But their recent loss of form has seen Cooper's side regress defensively too.
"I'm not going to hide away from any of this - we're not keeping clean sheets, we're not scoring and we're not winning," he added.
"We've got to stand up and be counted and tackle it head-on.
"In terms of goals conceded, in the four games that we've lost, we've only got ourselves to blame.
"If somebody said we would be fourth with seven games to go at the start of the season, I think that a lot of people would have taken it.
"There's no doubt we're not hitting the heights, not playing with as much personality as we've shown before, and I get it at this stage of the season when there's so much to play for.
"We know the last four games have not been good enough and those really disappointing stats, we're not happy about.
"But we're still fourth in the league, there are still seven games to play. So we've got to try and step away from it, get some perspective and realise there's still a lot to play for.
"We're not going to give up."