Swansea City must prepare for Cardiff City derby backlash: View | OneFootball

Cardiff City have started the season poorly but Swansea City shouldn't take anything for granted on Sunday afternoon

Swansea City welcome bitter rivals Cardiff City to the Swansea.com Stadium on Sunday afternoon in what is bound to be a fiercely-contested fixture as usual.

However, there is a bit of a twist this time around with the sides meeting just three weeks into the Championship season, and it's the first time the two sides have clashed in August since 1957.

Both the Swans and the Bluebirds aren't yet done in the transfer window, so it's set to be a unique situation, with the two sides usually facing each other later in the season with settled squads and settled styles of play.

Just two games into the Championship season, it's the Swans who have had the better start, winning one of their two league fixtures, while Cardiff have lost both of their fixtures and find themselves at the foot of the Championship.

After Cardiff's poor start to the season, it might be easy for Swansea to get carried away and perhaps get complacent, but the South Wales Derby could be just the perfect way for the Bluebirds to get their season back on track.

Swansea City must prepare for Cardiff City backlash

Erol Bulut's side have made a far from ideal start to the season, falling to a 2-0 home defeat to Sunderland on the opening day, before making it two losses with a 5-0 thrashing away to Burnley on Saturday.

There's no getting away from the fact that these are two poor results, but on early evidence it appears that both Sunderland and Burnley will be competing in the upper echelons of the Championship table, and perhaps not too much can be read into these losses.

Bulut will be rallying his troops this week in training and will know that if they are able to come away from Swansea with all three points on Sunday afternoon, the poor results against Sunderland and Burnley will just be a distant memory.

From Luke Williams' point of view at Swansea, Cardiff suffering a hammering in their last fixture is probably the worst thing that could have happened and will mean that Bulut's side will be more motivated than ever to get a result.

The South Wales Derby is always a highly-charged affair with neither side lacking motivation, but Swansea must prepare for a Cardiff backlash, and it's important that they don't let them get a foothold in the game early on.

Whoever scores first in this fixture almost always goes on to win, and if Swansea take an early lead, Cardiff's heads could drop after their disappointing start to the season.

Swansea are coming off the back of a 3-0 win while Cardiff lost 5-0 last time out, but form goes out the window in derby matches, as the old cliché goes, and the Swans should expect to see a different version of Cardiff come Sunday.

Swansea City will be looking to continue their outstanding South Wales Derby form

Sunday's fixture will be the eleventh meeting between the two sides since they both found themselves in the Championship again in 2019, and it's fair to say that Swansea have been dominant.

In the ten fixtures played since 2019, Swansea have won seven of them, Cardiff have won two and there has been one draw.

Swansea completed the first ever league double in the fixture's 110-year history during the 2021/22 season, before repeating the trick the following campaign, and Cardiff will be looking to avenge some tough recent results on Sunday.

Cardiff hold the upper hand in the fixture's all-time history, having won 46 games compared to Swansea's 43, but Swansea supporters will be keen to stress that they have won more league fixtures, and Cardiff lead the all-time standings thanks to Welsh Cup games.

Swansea must prepare for a Cardiff backlash on Sunday, and it feels like a game Cardiff can't afford to lose, even at this early stage of the season.