Phil Sumbler
Let’s face it we have speculated all summer about the sales that are likely to happen in SA1 this summer. Losing Flynn Downes was not really a surprise and it was widely believed that at some stage Joel Piroe would be the one to follow him out of the door.
It’s too early to speak for certain as we know that there are clubs interested in Piroe but with Burnley and the Swans seemingly on course to reach an agreement for Michael Obafemi the door should be very much open for Joel Piroe to stay at Swansea.
The club have been very open on their summer transfer stance, most people would say that they have been too open and that it has left us potentially wide open to low ball offers for players. We haven’t necessarily seen that to be the case but as we reach deadline day clubs know that our players are for sale all we can hope is that it is always at the right price.
The figures banded about for Obafemi for me seem to hit that mark and, with no disrespect to the player, if we were to lose one striker this summer then I would much prefer it to be Obafemi than Piroe.
Both have proven last season that they are capable of scoring twenty goals a season at this level, often seen as the mark of success for a striker. Piroe did that with some to spare and Obafemi showed more than enough in the second half of the season to prove he can do it. That is why Burnley are interested.
However for me Piroe fits better into what Russell Martin wants to achieve and how his team plays. Some of his goals were sublime last season and whilst he has been a little slow to find his feet this season some of that can be put down to speculation and some to the general poor form of our team in general.
Jamie Paterson was back on the bench last night and him and Piroe could be more pivotal to this team than maybe we knew. If they can get the combination working that we saw last season together with the craft of our two new loanees then maybe we have the foundations of something good after all.
The feeling around the club has, more than understandably, been negative this season. Poor home defeats, late goals to throw away points and just one win have created that. Couple that with a belief that Piroe was to go and no players coming in you understand why as we’ve all felt it.
Losing Obafemi would be a blow but it is the softer blow of the two options we had available on the striker front and Joel Piroe being here tomorrow morning could be as important as any new signing that we make on this deadline day.
Let’s hope that is how it pans out for last season’s leading scorer anyway.
