Boss: Our gamble didn't pay off

Carlos Carvalhal conceded his gamble had not paid off after Swansea City suffered only the second defeat of his reign at Brighton.

The Swans produced the most disappointing performance since Carvalhal took charge at the end of December as they were beaten 4-1 by a side who had started the day just a point better off than them in the Premier League table.

Glenn Murray scored twice for the hosts, while Anthony Knockaert and sub Jurgen Locadia also found the target for the Seagulls.

The Swans responded when Tammy Abraham’s shot kicked off Lewis Dunk and into the net five minutes from the end to make the score 3-1.

But Locadia’s late effort rounded off a miserable afternoon for the visitors, who drop back into the bottom three as a result of this setback.

“We made some mistakes that we don’t usually make today,” Carvalhal said.

“When we were losing 1-0 I thought we must move things around because we were not happy.

“We put Andre Ayew on in the first half on to try to help us. (Nathan) Dyer is more of a winger while Andre is more of an attacker, so we put him on near Jordan Ayew to try to make us more of a threat.

“The substitution was not about Dyer – he is playing very well.

“But we took some risks. We put Luciano (Narsingh) on at half-time and in that period we did well.

“We almost scored twice, through Luciano and then Ki (Sung-Yueng), then we took some more risks by putting Tammy on for a midfielder.

“We took all the risks today because we were not happy to be losing. We wanted to win.

“We placed a big bet – we had Tammy, Jordan, Andre and Narsingh on the pitch at the same time. When you do that you can win a lot of money or you can lose all your money.

“We knew it was possible we could change the game but also that they could hurt us on the counter-attack.”

The Swans fell behind on 18 minutes after their failure to deal with a long ball led to Mike van der Hoorn tangling with Murray and the referee pointing to the spot.

Murray converted the spot-kick to put the hosts 1-0 up at the break after both sides hit the woodwork.

The Swans had a good spell at the start of the second period, but their hopes of a result disappeared as Murray and Knockaert scored inside four minutes heading into the final quarter.

“I must be a critic of myself,” Carvalhal added. “I took the risk and maybe I could have waited until later to put Tammy on.

“But if you take a risk as a manager and it comes off, you are a genius. If it doesn’t happen – this is football.

“We tried everything to win. We placed a big bet and we lost the bet.”