Swansea City didn’t quite limp into the knockout stages of the Europa League last night. It was more like a drunken fall with the good fortune that they headbutted UEFA’s door open on the way down.

It’s no great surprise they played badly here in freezing, foggy Switzerland. They have done that plenty of times this season, not least away from home in European fixtures.

That 3-0 win in Valencia in September, extraordinary as it was, has very much been the exception. Since then it has been a downward trudge until this point when, had St Gallen taken more than one of their many second-half chances, and had Kuban Krasnodar done better than a 1-1 draw against Valencia’s 10 men, they would have been out.

Yet such hypotheticals are pointless beyond providing a reminder Laudrup did not need, which is that Swansea’s patchy form in this busy season left them vulnerable.

Laudrup, as is his entitlement, would rather not focus on that for now. After all, Swansea have qualified for the last 32 and that is remarkable when placed in a proper context.

‘Being through is the most important thing,’ Laudrup said. ‘In a couple of weeks we won’t think about how we got there we will just know we are in the last 32.

‘We have two months to wait until the knockout stage, and we are there because we deserve to be there.’ He added: ‘I hope that it is huge for everybody in Swansea. We don’t know when we will play in Europe again. Sometimes you appreciate it but maybe not enough when you are in it.

‘Maybe in two or three or four years they will look back in a different way.’ By then the memories of this particular fixture will be gone, which is probably for the best for all concerned.

Quite aside from Swansea’s nightmare journey, which included a seven-hour delay to their flight on Wednesday and a minor earthquake which nudged their team hotel, the game was dominated by St Gallen.

Neil Taylor scored an own goal that was disallowed, Jose Canas cleared a Marco Mathys header off his line and Roberto Rodriguez twice went clean through only to be stopped by Gerhard Tremmel. That was all in the second half before Mathys scored the winner after 80 minutes.

When Kuban equalised in Valencia moments later, Laudrup admitted he was ‘getting negative thoughts’. Kuban needed to win and for Swansea to lose, with a three-goal swing in the process. It nearly happened, but didn’t.

As Laudrup said, ‘that’s what is important’.

—Daily Mail