Back to the drawing board

Maybe it is not quite akin to the white smoke from the Vatican upon the selection of a new Pope but it is certainly waiting for the official confirmation that Potter will be swapping South Wales for the South Coast and the lure of the Premier League with Brighton.

I think many of us probably had a hope that Potter may be able to resist and continue the work that he started here in Swansea last season but it appears it was not meant to be with the reports surfacing quickly on Saturday that he would be appointed at the Amex possibly even as soon as at some point today.

It leaves the Swans once again in limbo as we start the search for yet another manager, something that now seems to be an annual event at the club with a succession of managers coming and going over the past few years and the lack of stability in the hot seat being evident.

Some decent names are being linked early doors as are some ones that will make you shudder at the very thought but this is definitely a back to the drawing board moment for the Swans at a time when it seemed as if we were making progress thanks to Potter’s excellent ability to get the best out of his young players with signs feeling as if they were good ahead of the new season.

What we know from here is that no new manager is going to be given a magical pot of money with which to work. There is every chance he will need to see some prized assets leave before he can think about moving into the transfer market and he will also need to work with the Chairman to remove the transfer mistakes of the past.

That narrows down some of the options and that means it is little wonder that the names of Leon Britton and Cameron Toshack are being linked in these early days. Nothing detrimental to say about them but they will be the easy (and cheaper) options for the clubs to go to.

We also know the club has a “black hole” which they need to fill and that is why many of the staff have been under the threat of redundancy whilst incomings into the club since relegation have been minimal which only serves to highlight the superb job that Potter did against the odds last season.

This next move for the club is critical and could be the difference between staying in the Championship or exiting through the wrong exit door. The one marked “relegation”

This isn’t doom and gloom this is just pointing out the obvious and how we can still point to some key decisions of the past that created these problems and wonder how the model club went completely wrong to turn into just another former Premier League club failing to recover quickly from some terrible transfer mistakes.

The next few weeks will be interesting and the sound bits from our absent owners will remain as silent as they have been pretty much since the Premier League place was lost and the riches that come with it equally as absent.

This is a big decision that needs to be made, let’s hope the new decision making team is up to it.

<#potter #bhafc>