Jenkins Confident

It was the season before last when the Swans topped League One and looked well poised to secure promotion for the second successive season. The Chairman was sanctioning a spend that exceeded half a million pounds in the transfer window as the likes of Rory Fallon, Leon Knight and Darren Way joined the Liberty revolution. But it all went so wrong and a penalty defeat at the Millennium Stadium ended the dream and it’s taken until now for the Swans to regain that much coveted top spot.

But with three straight league wins behind the side – and eleven goals in the process – it’s easy to see why Jenkins believes this time that the team will stay there.

“It’s early days in the season and it’s important that we don’t get carried away,” the Swansea chairman told the Evening Post

“But I do believe there are massive differences between now and two seasons ago when we last topped the table.

“Back then we had just moved to a new stadium on the back of a promotion and those two factors combined gave us a lot of impetus and energy.

“When that slowed down a bit and reality kicked in, results started to go against us.

“But this year we have Roberto as manager which is a big plus.

“We have a very, very strong squad of players, one which is stronger than we’ve had for sometime.

“When you consider that five or six of our major players have been out of the side and we’ve still been winning, you can see the strength in depth we have.

“Having that makes a massive difference for us compared to a lot of sides in the division and it shows you how much we’ve developed.

“We’ve also spent quite a bit of money behind the scenes to look after the players. We spend far more now than we did a couple of years ago on their well-being to make sure they peak on matchdays.

“In the first few months of that season when we were last at the top, we were playing out of our skin,” he added. “But now we seem able to compete and win games while playing well within our capabilities.

“Roberto and the players will all admit they can improve and, hopefully, as players like Warren Feeney and Andrea Orlandi continue to settle in we will do that.”

With seven wins banked from the last nine games, Jenkins hopes Swansea’s fans will respond by turning out in numbers when seventh-placed Hartlepool visit this Saturday.

And he is urging the club’s followers to try to keep level-headed as the season progresses.

“All of a sudden we’ve got a team who seem to be believing in their ability and enjoying themselves,” he said.

“The players and Roberto should be congratulated for that, but we’re aware that the season is over nine months long and things will not go our way every week.

“We will draw or lose games and we might not always produce a performance, but we have to believe we’ll keep moving forward.

“We need people to trust that the club is heading in the right direction, not yo-yoing as it has done in previous years.”