What next for Harry Darling as contract discussions said to be “shelved”

If the reports of yesterday evening are correct then Swansea City are facing the real possibility of losing Harry Darling for free next summer with Luke Williams stating that contract discussions are going to be put on hold.

Truth be told it has been a difficult few days for the Swans in the central defensive moves.   A bid for Wycombe’s Joe Low has been turned down, Nelson Abbey had his loan cut short, Ben Cabango was taken off in the Portsmouth humiliation as a precautionary measure and now the news is that we may have paused the contract discussions with Darling.   All this has happened in a three day period that separated the win against Luton and the defeat at Portsmouth.

The Swans have been hoping to tie down Darling on a new contract for several months now but it becomes somewhat alarming to then find that we cannot reach an agreement to extend that contract which leads to several thoughts as to why that maybe.

The harsh reality is that this feels like a moment where the player wants more than the club are prepared to pay.   We have learned much over the past few seasons that we have a strict pay structure and we aren’t ready to break it.   Darling knows his commodity is reasonably high at the moment and seems willing to keep his options open to see what the best offer is that comes his way.   For the Swans there is little that they can do in this situation and will be well aware that it could mean a free departure next summer.

This would all tie in with our recent move for Joe Low and I suspect that with the news that contract talks with Darling have stalled then we will see an increased attempt to bring the Wales international to SA1.  I would firmly expect to see more action on this front in the next few days given the comments of Luke Williams this evening about Darling.

“I think we are potentially going to be putting that to bed and letting Harry concentrate on his football,” Williams told BBC Sport after the 4-0 defeat at Portsmouth.

The news on Darling yesterday evening came at the end of a 48-hour period where the speculation was a new contract was close to being signed.   That in itself brings some questions as to how that speculation arose and then you start to wonder if the other speculation about Williams’ own future has played a part in talks stalling when so many were suggesting they were progressing towards a conclusion.

Darling was signed for the Swans by Russell Martin in May 2022 when he arrived from Martin’s former club MK Dons and in that time he has made almost one hundred appearances for the Swans.   Losing him on a free would be a blow to us given our investment into the player but with a target in mind it does seem that we have targeted his replacement already.   And that is the forward planning we continually call for.