Swansea City vs Preston North End. Sky Bet Championship.
Swansea.com StadiumAttendance15,250.
Sunday 18 August 2019 19:14, UK
Borja Baston's double ensured Swansea came out 3-2 winners over Preston after a thrilling battle at the Liberty Stadium.
The £15m Spanish striker went 1,022 days without a Swansea goal before the start of this season but now has three goals in three league games.
It was his equaliser on the stroke of half-time that gave the hosts a lifeline after Joe Rafferty's early strike put Preston ahead.
George Byers came on at the break and put Swansea ahead before Daniel Johnson levelled from the spot three minutes later.
But Borja headed in the winner to cap off a manic six minutes and move his side onto seven points from their first three games.
Alex Neil's men scored early in both of last week's big wins over Wigan and Bradford and they made another fast start in south Wales with a goal after 11 minutes.
Left-back Rafferty pushed forward, took a Swansea half clearance down with his chest and curled a shot past Freddie Woodman and inside the near post from 20 yards out.
Sean Maguire flashed a header just over and then sent a shot across the face of goal in the final stages of the first half as the visitors looked to make their domination count.
But they went in level after Borja scored his second goal of the season completely against the run of play four minutes into stoppage time.
Jay Fulton found the run of Connor Roberts with an inch-perfect pass to the right wing before Borja moved into a yard of space and swept his low cross into the far corner to level it up at half-time.
But it was three goals in six second-half minutes that changed the face of this Championship clash.
Substitute Andre Ayew began to threaten the Preston defence, before Byers turned the scoreline on its head after 63 minutes.
Borja missed the chance to net his second of the game from Bersant Celina's driven cross, but the ball fell kindly to Byers, who side-footed it into the corner from the penalty spot.
The lead only lasted three minutes, though, after Roberts crashed into Maguire in the penalty area. Referee Dean Whitestone pointed to the spot and Johnson beat Woodman to his right to level the scores at 2-2.
But Swansea turned to the man they brought back in from the cold to fire them back in front with 69 minutes gone.
Jake Bidwell charged on an overlapping run and received possession from Celina before clipping a delicate ball across the six-yard box for Borja to power a header into the back of the net.
And Swansea held on in the final moments to keep the pace with the early league leaders.
Steve Cooper: "Borja is happy, he is a big character who is very well liked in the dressing room and you can see he is enjoying life in Swansea. You look at his two finishes, they are outstanding number nine finishes. The first is a cut-back from Connor, he calmly puts that in and the header was fantastic, a great goal.
"In the first half, and the players know this, we were not at the level we strive to be at. We gave the ball away cheaply, we did not press intensely enough and allowed Preston - who we knew were a strong team - to build momentum, score a goal and control large parts of the game. But we scored some excellent goals, with some really good play while showing good resilience, character and pride for the football club."
Alex Neil: "I don't think there's any question we should have been further in front at the end of the first half. We had three or four golden opportunities that we didn't take, but at this level you are never going to dominate away from home for 90 minutes.
"The simple fact is that football is about having resilience and coming up against setbacks. We shouldn't have been level at half-time but we were, at the end of the day we gave the ball away and got punished. We have to look at the positives but realise we contributed to the negatives as well and we have to deal with that."
