Swansea City linked with Arsenal striker move – move on, nothing to see here?

Every close season and every transfer window brings about a host of links that never come to any fruition so it should never set any level of panic when names are just linked in the press or in any form of transfer discussion.

Often the names are linked by player representatives desperate to generate more interest in their players whilst on other occasions the reasoning is because they know that their clients will need to be on the lookout for a new club in the near future.

You only have to look back on any of the transfer windows, more so since we have moved to two windows a year, to understand that many of the names linked never actually come to fruition and often it is the players who are not linked that turn into actual transfer deals.  In fairness to the club here as well this is something that we have improved on in recent years and it has certainly been a mission of the current ownership group to plug the leaks that so often existed within the club in previous years.   That is not to say that public speculation does not come to anything on every occasion but we certainly shouldn’t assume that speculation, more so the early stuff, is an indication of our transfer policy.

That is certainly the case yesterday when the name of Nathan Butler-Oyedeji was linked to the Swans with Football Insider (Pete O’Rourke a long standing journalist who links plenty of players) saying that both us and Bristol City are interested in the player.

Thirteen substitute appearances on loan at Cheltenham last season produced no goals for Butler-Oyedeji last season on top of his zero return for Accrington (5 starts, 6 as substitute) the season before.    His four goal tally comes for Arsenal Under-21s in the Johnstones Paint Trophy although he did score five in eleven for Arsenal Under-21s last season when his loan spell at Cheltenham ended.

As well as the Swans and Bristol City you have German clubs Schalke and FC Nurnberg also being credited with interest in the player who has been at Arsenal from the age of eight.  He is expected to leave Arsenal this summer no matter what his destination is and that probably puts him in the category mentioned above of players where representatives are keen to drum up interest ahead of the summer activity.

For us this is a simple one, any interest that the Swans have will not be for immediate first team action.  At the age of twenty-one there is still much development ahead for the player so whilst we will not dismiss it completely this is not a player we are looking at to solve our problems up front.

The summer of speculation is here.