Just a week into his role as Swansea City head coach, Vitor Matos could be forgiven for having doubts over his decision to swap the Portuguese island of Madeira for the wet and windy south of Wales in winter.
The head coach has overseen two defeats against Derby County and West Brom in his opening two matches since leaving Maritimo to become Alan Sheehan's successor at the Swansea.com Stadium.
Prior to that, Matos went from the airport to watch Swansea City move towards the Championship departure lounge with a defeat at Bristol City.
Despite what he has said publicly in press conferences so far, it will not have taken long for the 37-year-old to suss out that the Swans are in something of a pickle.
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Having snatched defeat from the jaws of victory at West Brom last time out, where they lost 3-2 having been 2-0 up inside 11 minutes at The Hawthorns, Swansea sit 21st in the Championship table and are only outside of the relegation zone thanks to their marginally superior goal difference over Portsmouth.
It's now nine matches without a clean sheet for Swansea, which is a crying shame for goalkeeper Lawrence Vigouroux who is among the very small list of players who can emerge from the campaign so far with any sort of credit.
It was a fifth successive league defeat for Swansea, the first time the club have achieved such an unwanted record since being beaten in each of their final five Premier League fixtures of an ultimately disastrous 2017-18 campaign.
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They have not lost six league games in succession since the latter stages of the 2003-04 season, a run that somewhat ironically came shortly after Brian Flynn - who kept the club in the Football League in dramatic fashion just a year earlier - vacated the Vetch Field hot seat.
Matos will relish the opportunity to spend close to a full week with his new players for the first time on the Fairwood training ground this week as he bids to ensure his side do not equal that 21-year old record when they host Oxford United in Swansea on Saturday.
However, he has had to do so, hopefully just for the short-term, without the trusted members of his coaching staff who assisted him in Portugal, with club legends Leon Britton and Joe Allen continuing to support Matos in the early days of his tenure as Swans boss.
The former Liverpool coach will quite simply have to make do with what he currently has at his disposal, at least until after his side have faced Oxford twice, Portsmouth, Stoke City, Wrexham and leaders Coventry City over the course of the final month of what has been a turbulent 2025 for the club.
But there is no doubt he will need every ounce of the leadership qualities possessed by players including Ben Cabango, Cameron Burgess, Josh Tymon and Vigouroux to help get him through this current rocky period.
Others such as Eom Ji-sung and Ronald need to contribute far more or even be pulled out of the firing line to pave the way for others like Zeidane Inoussa, Melker Widell and the lesser-spotted Manuel Benson to at least get the chance to do so in a Swansea jersey.
At present, it does feel as though a basic sense of fortitude and grit is sorely lacking, as evidenced by the worryingly timid display in the 3-0 loss to Bristol City at Ashton Gate after Irishman Sheehan had departed.
As Swansea’s summer progressed, the Jack Army grew increasingly confident of building towards something more special this season.
But a run that has seen the club win just once in 10 league matches has exposed their major flaws.
The squad may seemingly have been strengthened back in the summer, but the sum of the parts currently add up to less than the whole.
And if one missing ingredient can’t be brought in from the transfer window – an appetite for the fight – then a club really is in trouble.
For the time being at least, and when quality is a real concern, fight is the very least the squad must show if they are to stand a chance of edging away from danger.
