For Martin the hard work starts today – 5 days until Blackburn

Russell Martin has clearly had a busy weekend.   Speculation over his future, watching his then MK Dons side beaten 5-0 by Bournemouth and by yesterday afternoon he was in South Wales and confirmed as the new head coach of the Swans.

Such is the life of a football manager thought there is no quiet period ahead for Martin who, no doubt, will have been up early this morning working on his plans ahead of the new season that, incredibly, is just six days away now.

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Martin has a big job ahead of him this week.   He will already have identified his own targets for the Swans as well as have an understanding of those that Andy Scott has been working on from the days of Steve Cooper.   The new head coach will want moves for his resources to be quick and efficient and some ideally ahead of the new season although the reality is his choices for Saturday may well come from what he has available at this moment in time.

Martin has already spoken about creating a style for the Swans and making us enjoyable to watch with some great references to those who have created the best teams at Swansea – Roberto, Brendan and Michael Laudrup were the three names that he mentioned.  That bit may take some more time, with patience from everyone, to make it happen but bringing back some of the style which bought us so much success has been so badly missing since we made the decision to replace one of the greatest footballers the game has ever seen with Garry Monk.

In terms of players, Saturday’s friendly saw a need for one more defender, at least one more midfielder and ideally a number 10 player who can provide the support that the forward line will create.  These will be priority for Martin to close and I think we can probably expect to start seeing some moves in the transfer market this week although, as referenced above, this is possibly not going to be in time for the trip to Blackburn.

Also high on the list of things to do for Russell will be the future of Swans captain Matt Grimes.  Everyone is anticipating him joining Fulham this week and that may well still happen.   However, we should remember that the best season we had from Grimes was under Graham Potter.   Potter tried to have this side playing football and Russell is going the same way.  Could that actually be something that has crossed the mind of the Swans captain and is there a twist in the tale that could see him not just stay but sign an extended contract?   The new head coach will make that call as to what he wants but the future of Grimes can expect to be sorted this week one way or the other.

Russell Martin will be at Fairwood early this morning to outline his further plans with his squad and then the hard work will start under the new backroom team who will put the squad through their paces working on the vision laid down by the head coach.   It will be a long week though for Martin both on and off the pitch as the Swans are very much playing catch up this summer on their Championship rivals and he will be desperate to start his Swans career on Saturday with a positive result.

It almost feels like the easy work has been done by securing Russell Martin, the hard work now starts in earnest.