Striker Search

Despite the excellence of Michu last season, by far the biggest need this summer is for the acquisition of a quality striker. Given the wealth of midfield talent that we already have at our disposal (Britton, Michu, Ki Sung-Yeung, Dyer, Canas, Routledge, Agustien, Hernandez, Lamah and potentially Taylor if Davies stops him returning to his previous left-back role), and heightened by the fact that we only play one man up-front, we really need a decent player to lead the line.

Last year it was a combination of Danny Graham and Michu, with Michu increasingly taking the spot as it became apparent Danny Graham had fallen out with the coaching staff. Michu, however, is a better asset to us in an attacking midfield role, where his late runs into the box fail to get picked up, thus making them and him more dangerous as a midfieldfer. When playing as the leading striker, Michu can be too easily marked out of the game, reducing his effectiveness.

Given the squad currently at our disposal we’d probably be starting Luke Moore, a talented but lightweight option, who personally I’d prefer as cover for both this position and the wingers-that-come-inside role. I’d love to think Luke Moore can finally prove all the doubters wrong this year, and there have been instances over the past couple of years where he has looked genuinely useful, but I just can’t see it. Also I have doubts that Michael Laudrup likes him, based upon the fact he didn’t get much game time even after selling Danny Graham and Michu got injured, instead preferring that lump of usefulness that was Itay Shechter – one of the worst strikers to don the Swansea shirt in a number of years.

Secondly the mantle would fall to Leroy Lita, a player that I have always really liked and one that certainly knows where the back of the proverbial net is. Unfortunately Leroy has an uncanny habit of winding people up the wrong way; a situation I fear occurred with Laudrup, because he was shipped out on loan to Birmingham and Sheffield Wednesday last season and never really got a fair crack of the whip here. Our manager, however, was one of the best forwards the game has ever seen, and if he’d seen anything in Lita then surely he would have kept him around regardless of the attitude (assuming it wasn’t that bad). This makes me think that most likely I overvalue Lita’s skills. On his attitude, I’ve heard various stories over the years of incidents involving Lita, arrests and his general personality, but I was assuming/hoping that age and experience might have calmed the spirit. I’ve heard nothing specifically from last season, however, and am just assuming that must have blotted his copybook once again, but would love to hear the specifics. Regardless, it seems Laudrup isn’t convinced.

So a big signing, or more likely two, will be needed to march forward next term. Last January’s attempts to make a few deadline day signings provide clues as to what sort of players are likely to fill Laudrup’s lone-striker type. It seems he likes a big striker up there, someone who works hard and can hold the ball up, releasing wingers and/or attacking midfielders into the box. I’m not going to pretend I know who he will sign, or indeed throw much valuable light onto who we should sign, but rather highlight the fact that generally this type of player is less expensive than the more traditional glamour striker.

I liked the rumours about Kone, Lukaku, Gomis, Aspas and Aubameyang signing, and really rated them all, unfortunately I have serious doubts about the validity of all of these stories bar Aspas and Lukaku (neither of whom we can sign, moving to Liverpool and staying at Chelsea, respectively). Surely it makes little sense to leak any information on potential acquisitions to the press, as it only bids up the potential price of the player and money is not an unlimited asset to a club such as ourselves. Hence, I imagine who we sign very few of us will have ever heard of, and hopefully we will hear nothing about the deal until it is signed, sealed and delivered.

Personally I wouldn’t be all that unhappy with the potential signing of last year’s target Kenwyne Jones, particularly as given his offseason of strife and the fact that his contract is now 6 months older, he would likely come significantly cheaper.

Other than Jones I don’t really know of any other potential signings, largely as I lack indepth knowledge of the international transfer market, but like the sound of the rumours. Closer to home a ‘free’ acquisition (obviously not free in reality as wages are involved, but free in terms of transfer fee as has been released by Arsenal) is Sanchez Watt, an interesting long-term investment possibility. Similarly built to Luke Moore, this young striker thrived in the Arsenal academy, but like most young players in the English game has found his path blocked by more experienced, better paid, established stars. I’m not saying Watt would by any means solve our paucity of strength up front, but he could be a good one-to-develop signing.

I eagerly look forward to developments up-front, and hope to be pleasantly surprised any day now.

No News is Bad News?

I wait impatiently for news of transfers to my beloved Swansea City and again, on June 17^th 2013, there is nothing other than the pre-announced arrival of Jose Canas. I do not mean to be greedy, I really do not, and having been a Swansea fan for roughly 30 years now I have grown used to disappointing transfer windows, but as we enter the latter stages of June we really need to bring in a few faces, at least to cheer up the neurotically concerned fans (myself included).

Who do I want? Someone talented, young, relatively cheap and destined to improve the squad, unfortunately these are the criterion nearly every other team is aspiring to. I’ve hear reports that we won’t get another Michu, but Chico was an equally good recruit last season, so I remain optimistic that Michael Laudrup and his gang can bring in another.

The wait though is killing me. I know, however, that prudent acquisitions require patience, so I will desperately try and get some. In the meantime, I frantically search the internet for news of potential signings, and the more believable ones include the potential purchase of Mexican defensive midfielder Jonathan dos Santos, Spanish defender Jordi Amat and another Spaniard, attacking midfielder Alejandro Pozuelo.

On Jonathan dos Santos I like the name, in fact I’ve always wanted us to sign his more attacking brother Giovanni, the problem here is that we already have enough defensive midfielders. So unless someone else is leaving I really do not think another defensively minded midfielder is a priority. In fact, the dream here is that somebody has got confused and it is really Giovanni dos Santos that we are signing, as his attacking excellence would really improve us. Regardless, you never can have enough quality players, so if Laudrup feels Jonathan dos Santos is the boy for us then obviously I’ll support it.

Moving onto Jordi Amat, this young defender looks like an excellent prospect, just the sort of signing we should be making as we look to bring in more comfortable, ball playing defenders into the Swansea system. I’m not saying he’d walk straight into the current line up, but he’d probably leapfrog Bartley (who I’m hoping surprises us this year, but to date hasn’t looked Premiership ready). He’s got everything a young defender should have, other than exceptional height, but in the ball retention system we maintain this is less of an issue as long as we still have a few bigger lads for corners and all, but I don’t want to over emphasise this point as he is still over 6’.

Finally onto Alejandro Pozuelo, a team mate of Jose Canas last season, this young lad looks to have a bit of the creative-genius about him. His imaginative midfield play is perhaps something that we have been missing in midfield recently. There seems to be a time in games sometimes when we are trying to pass the ball into the net and it jumps out at me that we really require someone who can make a goal out of nothing, whether or not Alejandro Pozuelo can be that man I do not know, but what I do know is that such a player would be a very welcome addition.

Transfer Gloom

So that’s two years in the Premiership, itself an amazing feat, and now we have to prepare ourselves for another battle. This year, to date anyway, it doesn’t look like we are losing the core of the side – remember last year, we lost Scott Sinclair (our best goal scorer at the time, in my opinion), Steven Caulker (our best defender, who’s loan spell with Spurs ended), Gylfi Sigurdsson (our most creative player) and Joe Allen (our tidiest midfielder, again just an opinion of mine). This year, unless some unpleasant shocks lurk around the corner, it just looks like we will just loose the loan players, and of these only Jonathan de Guzman feels like a blow and we might re-sign him.

So as we enter the summer transfer window, I read of a lot of panic concerning how we haven’t signed x, y or z. Let’s just remind ourselves what we lost last season – arguably our four best players – it certainly looks unlikely we will face similar exits this year. Then we should look at the relatively unknown signings that we made last summer (at the time anyway) – Chico and Michu – two sensational players, who have hugely added to the squad. Now assuming Laudrup’s targets are in a similar price range, or at least not too much more, then another player or two of this caliber and we should continue to improve.

As a Swansea fan our natural pessimism, built up through years of terrible form and disappointing transfers, leads us to fear we will lose our best players and get outbid on all the players we want. This may be true, but that’s where we have to maintain a sensible strategy – unpolished gems from bigger clubs, coupled with overseas signings that haven’t registered on the bigger clubs’ radars. This year I’m genuinely hopeful the quality of the squad can improve, at least modestly. The prospect of European football, plus a trophy in the cabinet, is bound to tempt a better class of player, the key though is to keep going for relatively inexpensive players with miles on the clock. We have to remember that with our small stadium we cannot pay the bigger wages and we have to try and invest only when we feel that player is a potential investment for the future.

I could follow this up with a list of potential gems that I think we should sign, but let’s be honest, if a couple of years ago I had suggested Chico, Michu, Caulker, Sinclair, Sigurdsson and Routledge this wouldn’t have got the fans that excited. We call for the signing of established international stars, because we know who they are. Laudrup, Morten Wieghorst, David Leadbeater, Erik Larsen, et al, will have their eyes on a few ‘diamonds in the rough’, we just have to trust their ability to spot and sign them. I eagerly look forward to who they will sign.

Background

I’ve always been a fan of the Swansea City football team, it sounds contrived but the old epression “cut me in half and you’ll read Swansea” sums it up. When I was a kid though being a Swansea city supporter wasn’t the natural choice, I was born in 1974 in the city of Swansea and we were a pretty bad football team for most of my youth. Liverpool were the team of choice for almost all of my class mates, the odd exception supporting Everton or Manchester United (note: nobody ever supported Arsenal and Tottenham was just associated with Chaz and Dav). That’s not all, Wales in the 1970’s was rightfully a hot-bed of rugby at its most beautiful – whenever I think of rugby I always think of handlebar moustaches and the outside-half factories that were hidden away in the vallys – but for me it was football and not because I was any good at it, because I’m rubbish at all sports but particularly bad at football. Football it was, and my home time club were always the only choice.

Maybe it was the innate love of the underdog, but my passion for Swansea grew throughout my youth. Delivering the local wrag, the truely appalling South Wales Evening Post, every night of my youth I read every single badly written word of that sorry excuse for a chip wrapper. This coupled with my fathers decision that he should spend more time with his son resulted in him taking me to all the sports Swansea had to offer. First it was rugby at St Helens – largely because my dad was a teacher at the university and had a student who’s flat overlooked the ground, so we went for free to watch the games there. Then, using the same reaso, we went to see Glamorgan at the same ground – hard to believe now that one of the bext rugby teams in the UK at the time shared a ground with a cricket team – a truely aweful cricket team who in the 20 or 30 times I must have seen them can’t have won more than 1 or 2 games. But my father didn’t have the patience for cricket, and the fact that neither he nor me, though not exactly physically looking like Greek gods, had the necessary girth to fit in with the rest of the rugby crowd, so we made the choice of following the Swans down the Vetch.

Our first game was a summer fixture – watching football on a warm sunny day never really feels right to me – that ended 3-2 to us, with one of our lads scoring a diving header, it was amazingly exciting to a little boy like me at the time, and even my father (who wasn’t a football fan, or any real sports fan, at the time….he even took the newspaper to the game to read at halftime) was genuinely enthralled. We were hooked, I don’t think we missed a home game (incuding pre-season friendlies) until I went to university, and then I came back fro Saturday home matches.

Unfortunately, howver, we were dreadful for pretty much the entirity of my youth. We started going regularly when we had already started the early-1980’s descent through the divisions. Transfer talk – one of my favourite things even now – was less common than discussions about how we were close or about to go out of business. I vaguely remember, for example, the super-club at the time Liverpool giving us som emoney to pay off some of our debts, with buckets constantly being jangled for penies to be thrown into to fight the seemingly permanent fight against extinsion.

About ten years ago, however, things started to turn around, the Supporter Trust (which we were initial members of) took control of the club, and little Bryan Flynn became manager. These two events changed the course of my beloved club. The key development of the Flynn regimme was his bringing of his old friend Kevin Reeves with him. A lot is said about Newcastle and funny man Alan Carr’s dad Graham, but Kevin Reeves was a genius. Reeves brought in a steady stream of players, the likes of which we hadn’t seen since Tommy Hutchison graced the wing all those years ago, ranging from Jason Scotland to Lee Trundle (who will get an srticle of his own very soon). He stayed after flynn left – an exit that was largely due to Flynn refusing to move to Wales – and was the brains behind most of the good signings seen in the Flynn, Jackett and Martinez eras. Unfortunately Reeves left with Roberto, and has since gone to Everton with Martinez. Kevin Reeves is the reason Wigan made so many great signings these past four years, David Whealan should have broken the bank to keep him (that’s if money even plays a role to Reeves).

The past ten years have seen a meteoric rise through the divisions, with many a manager come and go – Flynn, Jackett, Martinez, Sousa, Rodgers – all bringing something special to the table. In recent years we seem to have become a finnishing school for managers, giving those with little or no experience a chance, often ignoring their other recent failures. Today we have Michael Laudrup and our first ever major trophy – the Capital One Cup (it’ll always be the Milk cup to me) – and I really hope Laudrup stays, but if recent years have taught me anything it is that the current owners are great at spotting managerial talent (maybe the next great Swansea manager is already on the club’s pay – Morten Wieghorst or Gary Monk maybe). Whatever happens the journey will continue, with inevitable ups and downs along the road, but it is vital that we travel the future carefully, remembering that we don’t want to tie a financial noose around the club’s neck like many/most of our peers have. This club is an interwoven part of the fabric of the community and we will support it through think and thin, I just wish my father who gave me this gift of supporting Swansea could have lived to see our first trophy – he died three years ago this month, the last trophy he saw us lift was the Autoglass Trophy back in 1994.