Swansea City boss delivers verdict on Sunderland win and the key decision that paid off

Swansea City boss Luke Williams said his team were rewarded for focusing on their own game plan after securing three crucial points at the Stadium of Light on Saturday.

Williams admitted Mike Dodds' change of formation had surprised him, and was something that his players weren't prepared for. But they dominated the first half and were unfortunate to be only 2-0 ahead at the break, a lead they eventually held onto despite Luke O'Nien's header.

"We tried to concentrate on improving our performance as a team, that was the key focus for me," Williams said.

"Imagine if we set up a game-plan purely based on the opposition and they change everything today and we lost. We have to understand the opposition - it would be crazy not to - but at the same time we have to be excellent at our own game. We have to turn up and try to impose the game-plan on the opposition. Today was a good example of that. Had we developed a really strong game plan on what we think Sunderland were going to do, we'd have been lost today.

"They were different to what we thought. I tried to keep an open mind and give my players advice rather than tell them we'll do one thing then change everything. In my opinion for the players to go into a game with four different game plans depending on personnel and formation is taking away from them being able to have the confidence in something. They showed their confidence in their own game plan and style today and I think that's what got us the victory."

Williams praised Sunderland's 'brilliant' second half showing and admitted he was frustrated his side couldn't maintain the same level of dominance that had shown in the first half, but felt they were nevertheless worthy of the three points.

"Particularly the first half was strong," he said.

"I think we were good value for the result. We have been seeing some really good performance markers in games but it's difficult when the result is negative.We felt that we were improving bit by bit and today is a big step forward.

"Ronald deserved both the goals. He's deserved one or two more key actions in previous games, he was a huge threat today. He's so quick and direct and I'm really happy for him.

"I don't like to talk about XG and things like that but as coaches we need to do it, because we try to protect our own mentality and find the truth of the performance after a bad result," he said.

"We've had a very high XG in most of our games, but today we converted and that's the big difference. Hopefully we'll start to believe more now, I think that today was just an example of us being more clinical.

"We need now to try and control longer periods of the game and weather the storm better, I think the opposition were brilliant in the second half and put us under a lot of pressure but on the flip side, I was able to see us defending in a really tough venue. I'm happy to have seen that, but of course I'd like us to be dominant for longer."