The summer exits will present the biggest challenge yet for Coleman & Co

The lack of forward planning and total short term thinking will be laid bare this summer as the Swans could feasibly be forced to rebuild pretty much a whole squad in between campaigns which, given the record of our previous transfer windows, does not fill anyone here with confidence.

Whilst there has been much criticism in recent months of our transfer dealings (and rightly so) a look at the players that we could lose (for nothing in many examples) this summer makes you sit up and take notice and question even more the tactics that we use when trying to shape a squad that we have to completely overhaul each summer.

The management team at the club this year have spoken much about their thirteen signings of last summer but with two already moved on and others expected to follow it highlights just how far out of touch we are in our transfer dealings.    With six loan players at the club at the moment we are faced with the reality that five of those – at least – will depart the club this summer.  Add into that the players that are out of contract and you have a problem that we should not be facing.

Last summer we saw Ryan Manning and Joel Latibeaudiere leave the club at the end of their current deals and this time around we could see the likes of Jamie Paterson, Liam Cullen and Liam Walsh do the same thing.   Of course it maybe that some of those (and others) do not feature in the long term plans of Luke Williams but for every departure we see from the club this summer it means another replacement needs to be sought bringing more into question our reliance on loan players as well as allowing contracts to come so close to expiry.

So what does the list of potential summer departures look like?

Loan Players – Carl Rushworth, Harrison Ashby, Bashir Humphreys, Charlie Patino, Jamal Lowe, Charles Sagoe Jr

Out of contract – Joe Allen, Kyle Naughton, Jamie Paterson, Lewis Webb, Przemysław Płacheta, Nathanael Ogbeta

Option to extend – Liam Cullen, Nathan Wood

Club (allegedly) looking to move on: Kristian Pedersen, Nathan Tjoe-A-On, Jerry Yates, Mykola Kuharevich

Add those names up in total and you are up to eighteen players.   That is not to say that they will all move on but the reality is the loan players (with the possible exception of Jamal Lowe) will go.    It is difficult to see those out of contract getting new deals with the exception of maybe Paterson and Placheta whilst we could take the option of an extension for both Cullen and Wood you wonder whether that is really going to be a thing for us.

So whilst not all eighteen will move on we are only really talking four or five staying here.   Leaving thirteen holes (it’s that number again!) in the squad and that is before we have considered the fact that we all know we need to strengthen in many positions to create more depth.

We are constantly told that much planning is going into future windows but the above list suggests that the planning needs more depth and certainly much more forward planning.   Maybe we need to rely less on loan players (five or six loan players in the squad means we start every summer in a negative position on the squad) and utilise the scouting networks that we should always have available as a professional football club.

If Andy Coleman and Paul Watson have thought windows have been tough to date then the one they are coming up to this summer is definitely going to be the toughest and, on the evidence to date, it is absolutely right that people are questioning whether they are up to it as a collective unit.

Another big summer lies ahead and the planning needs to be well underway.   Genuinely this time.