Huge month ahead for Swans – worrying times from the fan perspective

Pre-season friendlies are traditionally the games to ignore when it comes to assessing how the team is likely to perform in the season ahead.   Too many “chances” being given to fringe players and ninety minutes of football is interrupted too often by substitutions and the like.

However, what pre-season friendlies do highlight on a frequent basis is deficiencies within a squad and for Luke Williams and Swansea City at the moment those deficiencies are plentiful and will be more than a little cause for concern to supporters and coaching staff alike.  The fact that – Liam Cullen aside – we do not have a recognised striker within the squad is as close to negligent as you can get from the people behind the scenes and whilst we have a month left of the transfer window we have just two weeks before the season starts which already means that any player is coming to us at least three weeks behind the rest of the squad in terms of preparation for the season.

It has become tiresome now to hear from the likes of Andy Coleman as to how the mistakes of the previous transfer windows have been learned but the reality remains that we approach this window in the same way we have approached numerous ones since the takeover of the club eight years ago.  Nothing changes no matter what words they use.

We have made three signings this summer all of whom appear to be able to add something to the squad but, whatever angle you look at right now, the squad is weaker right now then it was when the last season ended in May.  And we know just how weak that squad was to manage the demands of what is always a long and tiring season in the championship.

We have to acknowledge at this point (again) that there is still plenty of time to get new players into the squad but it is scary how we have yet again decided that the best time to do our business is in the closing stages of the window – an incredible lack of foresight and planning yet again could prove to be our downfall.

Last season saw us rely very heavily on loan signings – most of them not really successful ones – and it will be a natural fear that we are heading that way again.  It becomes more obvious that the recent “investment” into the club has been for no reason other than to prop up our cashflow and I would also add that it would be amazing if there was not some level of sale in the next few months – that would be an almost logical conclusion given the percentage of the club that now sits under the ownership of the majority group.

Those rumours of a sale have been prevalent now for a couple of years and there have been reports of the club being hawked around for a sale and we should not lose sight of the presence of Nigel Morris who, after investing, has seen his percentage reduce thanks to the dilutions but it isn’t unfeasible to believe that he could be in charge before too much longer.

That though is an aside as this is about transfers or in the case of Swansea City the lack of them.   Three players in are in positions that we need strengthening but the performances in the friendlies have continued to lay bare the fragile nature of our squad and unless we utilise the remaining period of the window well then this is a squad that will continue to struggle in the Championship next season.

Everything continues to revolve back to Andy Coleman’s famous mantra of judge him by his actions but those actions are yet again threatening to come up well short of the mark required to deliver a squad capable of competing in the championship.

Over to you Andy, you have little over a month to prove us wrong.