Rob DaviesThe Swans have just nine games left of the season and Saturday’s bore fest against Birmingham was as low quality as any game we’ve seen this season – but why won’t Russell Martin take a chance on developing some of our youth team?
Many sides in this division have great success by developing their own, look no further than our noisy neighbours Cardiff City who utilise the likes of Mark Harris, Ruben Colwill (ok they both have Swansea links), Isaak Davies and others.
Derby are another great example of players flourishing when given the opportunity, so just why hasn’t Martin with nothing to gain or lose from this point start blooding some of the quality in the youth team?
The season has been over for quite some time with no risk of relegation and no chance of a play off push but the only hint of the academy graduates getting involved is in Cameron Congreve and he has only seen single figure minutes so far.
There’s undoubtedly further considerable quality in the Swans U23 team such as Joel Cotterill, Azeem Abdulai and Ben Lloyd (who scored in pre season) but the fact we haven’t seen any of these players this term puzzles me.
Martin clearly has designs on wholesale summer additions but those are likely to be costly especially after a season when the Swans have purchased Michael Obafemi, Joel Piroe, Andy Fisher and Flynn Downes for substantial sums of money.
In another baffling move, take the signing of Finley Burns on loan which allowed Brandon Cooper to join Swindon on the same terms – he was getting rave reviews at the League One club before his injury, but what is the rational in those moves?
I for one hope to see some of the youth stars make the grade towards the end of the season, it can’t hurt and you’d certainly see more energy than from the “tired” senior team on Saturday.
