Journalists move to distance Luke Williams from West Brom job

It is fair to say that the New Year has not started quietly as far as Swansea City is concerned with speculation over the future of manager Luke Williams taking over the majority of the Swans social media discussions.

Hot on the heels of the embarrassment of yesterday’s 4-0 defeat at Fratton Park today has become the Luke Williams show which is no doubt fuelled by some very strange press interviews in the past 96 hours, none of which  have done anything to extinguish the links between him and the vacant managerial role in the West Midlands.

Speculation has been rife today over whether West Brom have made an approach to the representatives of Williams (the general consensus was that they had), whether talks were lined up (the wide belief here was that they were taking place tomorrow) and in the afternoon the discussion turned to the fact that Williams was ready to resign his position to make the move to West Brom easier for himself.   Those three things combined were enough to send discussion points to a frenzy as many tried to pick their way through the speculation and establish the facts.

Now I have always been a firm believer in that there is never smoke without fire and there is little doubt in my mind that some level of discussions have taken place between representatives of the Baggies and representatives of Luke Williams.   How detailed those discussions are nobody really knows (other than those present to actually be part of them) but these things don’t get as widely discussed as they have been without something of substance sitting behind them.

However, as the Swans Twitter world went into some level of meltdown there were some interesting developments taking place closer to the Hawthorns as local journalists to the Baggies moved to distance Williams from the vacancy that opened up last week.  First, you had Lewis Cox from the Express & Start stating that “Luke Williams is not in the frame for the WBA job” before he was joined by BBC West Midlands commentator Steve Hermon who said “Luke Williams might be the odds-on bookies favourite for the Albion job but it’s my understanding that WBA aren’t pursuing the Swansea head coach for their vacant role.”

My understanding is Swansea’s Luke Williams is not in the frame for the vacant #wba job. Club in no rush to make appointment.
🎧 Latest podcast from last night is shorter but covers quite a bit as first one since Corberan’s exit. 🎧👇 https://t.co/hxiL6EvXSE

— Lewis Cox (@LewisCox_star) January 2, 2025

Luke Williams might be the odds-on bookies favourite for the Albion job but it’s my understanding that #WBA aren’t pursuing the Swansea head coach for their vacant role.

It’s likely another case of an agent drumming up interest in their client, as seen with Martin links.

— Steve Hermon (@SteveHermon) January 2, 2025

Two journalists in quick succession of each other stating the same thing generally means it’s been quickly fed to them to say it and the close timeline between the two tweets tells you that is probably the case here.   It is also potentially the case that local journalists are not always correct but their ears will be relatively close to the ground as far as a managerial search is concerned in a club such as West Brom.

This now brings us to where we are now.   We have a position where most people in Swansea seem convinced that Williams is on his way where those closer to the Hawthorns seem to almost be denying that it could even be a possibility.   Right now I land closer to the side of the West Midlands journalists than the speculation around Swansea but remain of that position that there is no smoke without fire so whilst it is claimed that Williams is not on the radar of the Baggies I just cannot on any level believe it to be true that he isn’t.

So here we now stand, two days into a New Year with all the discussion about the future of Luke Williams – speculation that is made all the more interesting by the fact that the Baggies visit the Swansea.com Stadium on Saturday in a league fixture.   And then, for certain, all eyes will be on Luke Williams.   Half and half scarf anyone?

And for the record, the picture below was Luke Williams just one week ago…