Swansea boss hails Ayew after season-opening victory

Swansea's Andre Ayew

Monday Sep 14, 2020. 11:00

Swansea City manager Steve Cooper has praised Andre Ayew for his hard-running contribution to their EFL Championship season-opening victory this past weekend.

The Swans overcame Preston North End 1-0 at Deepdale thanks to a goal from Morgan Gibbs-White early in the second half.

With Ayew’s future at the club the subject of major speculation, the Ghanaian international focused on the job at hand and played a major role in the Welsh side’s win.

“I thought all the attacking players did well. Andre and Jamal ran so hard and put their backline under a lot of pressure. They did not let them play with any real composure or quality,” Cooper said after the game, as reported by his club’s official website.

“I liked us, I thought we were threatening. Maybe not so much after we scored, but that’s understandable.

“If you think about it, we are only three weeks in from the start of pre-season.

“We are not going to be 100 percent up to speed, so the fact we have picked up a win here in the condition we are in at the moment is a big plus.”

Cooper continued, “It is definitely a great start, any result you get here is a good one.

“It is a really tough place to come as you could see from the record they had here last season. They have pretty much the same squad and the same team and it was tough.

“But I thought our performance was good, in the first half we got into some really good positions and did not capitalise on creating that real chance on goal.

“We were getting in down the sides, we looked a threat and we kept that going.

“As Jake [Bidwell] does, he kept going, he kept doing the right things, he got in again off some brilliant play from Andre and Morgan gets in the six-yard box to put it in. It was a brilliant team goal.”