Planet Swans ArchivesThere is of course a reason why teams get parachute payments on relegation but it seems worse for us this summer as we pay a further price of some really poor transfer windows that have seen us make some very strange purchases. Purchases that ultimately cost us our place at the top table.
Lukasz Fabianski cannot be classed as one of those but he was an early departure to be followed by Andre Ayew and Alfie Mawson (another good buy) with Jordan Ayew also next to leave if you believe the comments of his ‘representatives’ yesterday who say that he won’t be here next season.
There were no surprises in the players leaving but the stark reality for me has been the nature of the departures with players going for what I would class as less than market value and in some instances for no value to us whatsoever.
Nobody will be able to convince me that having paid a club record fee just six months ago for Ayew senior that a loan deal is in the best interests of the club. I know we need to free up his wages but freeing them up helps the cashflow not the transfer budget that we can afford to Graham Potter.
Mawson went for a fee reported as £15m plus add-ons. Given that he has gone to Fulham you would like to hope that the add-ons do not include European places or major trophies and somewhere there is a decent sell-on clause as well. For many years, Swans fans have believed that we have sold players cheaper than we should be aiming to and in the case of Mawson I just cannot but help think that it is the same thing again. Surely for this player he is worth more than the £15m we have secured?
We still have Bony on the books – another poor buy from last summer – on wages that I don’t suspect anyone would match (if the rumours are true) and this is another reason why there is so much criticism of our self appointed director of football and questions as to how he is still in his role.
The Premier League is a place where money talks more than anywhere else but we do seem to be paying a bigger price for relegation than maybe we needed to because of these poor transfer dealings and that is a far bigger worry given the same people oversee the deals now as they did then.
Will the mistakes of the past be learned? Only time will tell but the evidence of those mistakes has become more obvious in the past two months and there’s a reason why optimism is very low at the moment.
<#championship>
