Planet Swans ArchivesNow before I go too far into this article, I am completely behind the club being financially prudent and ensuring that any mistakes of the past are learned from and never repeated. Indeed, they are things that were spouted on a reasonably regular basis by our board especially when the marketing film of Jack to a King was released. Hell, they even invited Tony Petty to ‘star’ in it so that they could show just how we had learned from those mistakes.
The problem then was the hype went with them, the ‘celebrity’ status was there (in their heads) and you could repeat as many mistakes as you wanted without fear of reprise. Massively terrible transfer decisions were made, contracts were given out in much the same way we see Christmas presents handed out and the club spiralled slowly towards relegation.
A theme was born. Appoint a manager late December, scrape survival with some unlikely results, extend the managers contract and sack him again in December before repeating the same once more. In between though you had to make sure that you bought some former players back in transfer windows and paid over the odds for them at that time (both in fees and wages)
Guidolin, Clement, Carvalho (we excuse Bradley here as that was just the owners you sold to behind everyone’s backs flexing their muscles) and Carroll, Bony and Ayew senior are all examples of repeating the same mistakes time and time again.
But within those mistakes if you can tell the right people that bad decisions were not your fault but all good decisions were (until those good decisions turn bad) and you have the perfect plan that even Scooby Doo would be hard pushed to solve.
When you add all that together you then wonder whether it is any surprise when you open the programme ahead of that Wigan game to read the Chairman saying “There was a big turnaround in the summer as major changes were the priority in terms of the staff and squad.
“Those changes were made in order to provide us with a chance to quickly turn our fortunes around and mount a challenge for a promotion push to get back to the Premier League at our first attempt.”
Surely there is nobody out there who can actually believe this to be true. The problems were we needed to offload players but we had a group of overpaid and disinterested players and once again we were held over the barrel in terms of sales. A barrel that we never seemed to be on the other side of in terms of purchases. Mistakes were being made and repeated.
These programme notes were of course exactly twelve months on from the Chairman’s own words which appeared in the Guardian รขโฌลWell, I have to take responsibility, there are reasons but I think probably a lot of people donรขโฌโขt want to listen to them because they want to see action and they want to see the team doing well. So, yes, I take responsibility for it. I donรขโฌโขt totally agree my position is how they say it. I think if we continue as we are, yes it will be. If we continue on this path of hardly winning games, yes, I have no doubt it is [untenable].รขโฌย
Just four months later the Swans threw away their Premier League position in a fit of no effort in the last eight games and yet here we are with the untenable position still secured and comments like those seen on Saturday still going without fear of reprisal.
There was hope that we may have turned it round this season but the mistakes of previous windows became more and more obvious in the summer and the only half saving grace is that some of the youngsters have stepped up to the mark and kept us in mid table going into the New Year. That could have been oh so different had that not worked (and please let’s not pretend that was part of a master plan all along as it’s simply convenient arguments)
This is ignoring as well completely the whole way the sale of the club was completed in 2016 and the complete absence of our owners at pretty much most games and certainly their total silence at any stage other than maybe 2/3 times a season. Off the pitch the club is a mess and has not been run the way it should have been. Quite simply the mistakes of the past have not been learned from (other than the glaringly obvious ones like you cannot just sack players) but the people who made them have not been made accountable and still enjoy everything they have enjoyed through the good times.
If we have to have one wish as Swans fans in 2019 it is that somebody wakes up and realises that the club is continuing on the downward spiral (off the pitch for certain) and that changes have to be made for that to be any different going forward.
It has to be better than what we have now and then we can ignore the master plan being summed up by the person that penned it in these few words “With a little luck along the way and the solid support of the fans behind them I believe anything is possible in the months ahead.”
Walt Disney couldn’t have written better himself…
<#jenkins #backtojack>
