Transfer deadline day – what lies ahead for Swansea City? A day of disappointment?

The unanswered question of any transfer deadline day is why the window has to slam shut tonight.   It has always remained a mystery as to why it cannot just be shut quietly or even just closed but expect the word slammed to be use many times today as football fans brace themselves for the final day of transfer flurries.   Or at least until January anyway.

The Swans have been busy by their standards this summer with nine new arrivals already confirmed in SA1 with a ninth – Kristian Pedersen (as first linked here back in July) expected to be a ninth at some point today with the player targeted to try and strengthen a defence that is yet to keep a clean sheet this season.

Josh Key, Josh Ginnelly, Harrison Ashby, Carl Rushworth, Charlie Patino, Mykola Kuharevich, Nathan Tjoe-A-On, Nathan Broome and Jerry Yates are all new arrivals so far this far in the window although there have been the departures (for a variety of reasons and methods) of Ryan Manning, Joel Latibeaudiere, Steven Benda and Joel Piroe to provide some balance to how the window looks so far.   And that is before we factor in the departure of last season’s loan players.

On the immediate face of the evidence presented on the pitch the window is some way away from being described as a strong success.   Four league games without a win and 1 win in 6 in total is not the start that Michael Duff would have wanted and he will hope to be active in the window together.

A left back, a central defender (Pedersen will fit this description), creative midfielder and a new arrival up front feels like the requirement as a bare minimum but the speculation is already rife that we could easily fall some way short of that requirement by the time the slamming  noise is heard outside the Swansea.com this evening.

We have some strong links of players we are interested in.  Jake Bidwell is rumoured to be a potential return as Coventry seem set to let him go.  Add to that links to Zak Vyner and Jonathan Panzo and you have enough to suggest that we could do business although none of them seem to be done deals at the time of penning the words for this article (Thursday evening)

Swans fans – sum up your expected feelings for tomorrow night in one word #Swans

— Planet Swans (@swansnews) August 31, 2023

As with every deadline day there will be links that emerge during the course of the day – some of which will sound familiar to us and some of which are much less so and there is bound to be some that raise the eyebrows.   And the hope remains that some are likely to go through.

The real alarms for me appear to be the lack of links with creative midfielders.   We are sadly lacking in that department since the departure of Olivier Ntcham and I cannot help but worry that we are not seemingly that active in replacing him.   And – having missed out on Keinan Davis – we seem to be rumoured to be looking more at young strikers on loan rather than permanent moves.   If that is the case then lets take our chances with Yates, Big Mick and Cullen rather than giving game time to someone who is maybe unproven at any level in the league.   We have been there before and it hasn’t often ended that well.

And if it is proven that we don’t strengthen in midfield and attack then our lack of attacking options could prove to be our downfall this season.   For me this would be a big failing (again) on those responsible for recruitment at the club and suggests that some of the lessons of the past have not been learned from despite what we were promised.

The post mortem though on the transfer window as a whole though is not to happen now, that is for after the deadline has passed so for now just settle in and watch what happens.

Maybe we will be pleasantly surprised?