Swans stand firm in the face of Leeds United and Southampton interest

The success of any transfer window will always be based not just on the quality of the players that you have successfully delivered to the club but also the fee income that you have generated through outbound sales.

And almost certainly part of that judgement will be determined by your negotiation skills in the face of multiple clubs being interested in one of your prized assets especially when you know that each and every one of them will be hoping that you elect to deal on the “cheap”.

And each of those clubs will also be aware that in our industry the clock ticks on the time in which deals have to be completed and everybody – whether a buyer or a seller – knows that come the end of August the opportunity to do a deal has disappeared.   Well, for a few months anyway.

On the face of it, multiple clubs being interested in Joel Piroe can surely only be good news for us.   We have seen reports for weeks of Nottingham Forest, Leicester and Atalanta whilst Leeds United and Southampton are also in there as potential suitors for our leading scorer of the last two seasons.  With Piroe’s departure looking more and more inevitable this summer then the question is definitely around how much will we get rather than will we actually sell him.

And this is where the challenge comes in for Paul Watson.   Still relatively new to Swansea City, the new Sporting Director has had a busy start to life in SA1.  A new manager, some new players and even an outgoing in Morgan Whittaker.  All of that seems to have happened in a flash although we know his time at Swansea has been longer than the official appointment date will ever tell you.

But whatever he has done this summer, the sale of Joel Piroe will go a long way to highlight the full extent of the value of Watson.  And that could be where his biggest challenge lies, how does he get the best value he can for Piroe at a time when the clock is starting to tick down on a transfer window that only has six weeks left to run.

He may have other challenges as well.   Southampton’s interest brings to the fore Russell Martin and a knowledge that will be reasonably extensive at the club.   Even in the short time since he left then much has changed but, as much as Watson takes control, the former Swans boss will be aware of the workings of the majority ownership and may well have a head start in terms of how long we may have been preparing for the summer departure of Piroe.

Never underestimate the value of some level of “inside knowledge” when it comes to negotiation.   Cast your mind back a few years to the sale of Joe Rodon to Tottenham.   Trevor Birch may have had a much wider knowledge of the financial situation of the club than Russell Martin will ever have had but he managed to get us to deal at a reduced level (his own admission suggested there could have been more on the table had we held firm.)   The two differences in here was that demand for Rodon wasn’t huge at the time and Birch was controlling the deal from a Tottenham perspective.

At this point we shouldn’t probably either completely dismiss the fact that the whole process to take Martin to Southampton dragged on seemingly because they were stalling over just a few hundred thousand pounds on the small print of whether they were Premier League or Championship at the time of approach.   That will stick in the mind of Paul Watson (and the majority owners) and could well mean that Southampton start on the back foot on what could have been a level playing field.

Nottingham Forest provide an interesting alternative to the clubs currently being mentioned.  Not least because they are the only Premier League club out of the five and Piroe is known to want to play at that level.   Steve Cooper of course knows Piroe well and will be well aware of what it takes to persuade the player (and those who influence him) to make a transfer move.   For us the longer Forest are in this race the better.    Whilst the interested Championship clubs aren’t exactly shy on budget the presence of a Premier League budget in the middle of this will help Watson keep the price high.

Leeds, Leicester and Southampton will all have a desire to return to that Premier League level next May and that in itself is not a bad thing for us.   A proven Championship striker will help that desire along and it is impossible to rule out a move to any of them.   If Watson is cute here he will keep interest from all three alive for as long as possible.

The key to all of this is undoubtedly to keep as many people interested as long as possible.   The danger for Watson will be that slowly clubs drop out or move onto other targets which take away our negotiation advantage.   At the moment with at least five clubs seemingly interested then we are probably the ones in the driving seat.   If we were at the stage in a months time with just say one or two left then the advantage returns a little bit to the potential buyers.   And of course if it is in a months time then any desire we have to get a replacement for Piroe will have to be done in a much smaller window!   Who would be a sporting director in a transfer window…

So there you have it.   A simple task for Paul Watson.   Get the best deal for Piroe, hold firm on our belief as to his worth, give us enough time to get a replacement and do all that whilst completing the other transfers you already have on the go.   What could possibly go wrong…