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Pre-Season For The Swans

The foundations have been laid and tomorrow the players will report back for pre season training with several new faces in the squad. For the first time in 13 years, there will be no Roger Freestone joining the squad with Brian Murphy the only first team goalkeeper currently on the teams books, although Kenny Jackett is working on adding to the men in green/purple/yellow.

But there will be new faces joined by trialist Dennis Oli tomorrow who has joined on a two week trial after being released at the end of last season by Queens Park Rangers. Joining Oli will be Sam Ricketts, Kevin Austin, Adrian Forbes, Gary Fisken and Garry Monk who all signed contracts with the Swans over the summer. With contracts now also signed by Kris o’Leary, Stuart Jones and Antonio Corbisiero, Jackett’s jigsaw is almost complete after a busy time during his first summer at the club.

Added to the faces of last season that we know, and in most instances, love, it looks a stronger Swansea side that report back for pre-season this year although it is hard to tell without seeing the players in action.

Jackett though remains on the look out for new additions that fall within the budget that he was given to work with for next season as well as the number two position to himself which, at the time of writing, remains unfilled. There have been several links with this vacancy over the course of the summer although at this moment there are no rumoured targets.

Also returning to the Vetch will be Lee Trundle after Swansea venomously denied the ‘rubbish’ spouted by Colin Calderwood that the Swans were looking to offload him during the course of the season. These are stories that chairman Huw Jenkins and director David Morgan have both firmly said were untrue and Jackett himself has openly said that he is not looking to rid the club of last season’s top scorer.

It will be a hard few weeks work for the Swans as they look to start the season in the same way as they did last season although every Swans fan will hope that next time around the momentum is maintained rather than falling away sharply from September onwards.

But of course what it all means is that with pre-season training starting the new season is growing closer and the very last season at the Vetch beckons us. Bring it on?

Why not check out the latest Vetch Verdict on the BBC site?