Swansea City Chairman Andy Coleman has often asked us to judge him by his actions and all too often when we sit back and do judge him on those actions we realise just how out of his depth he is as Chairman of a professional football club.
Many people will give Andy somewhat of a free ride for his time at the helm of the club when it was still under the ownership of Jason Levien and Steve Kaplan but the reality is Andy was a part owner back then and has been here in SA1 for almost two years – a two year period where the club has continually declined and now finds itself in a real possibility of being dragged into a relegation battle with little sign that we have any fight in a team that has been decimated through the madness of following a data-driven recruitment plan that shows no sign of yielding any of the results that we want to see.
Cast your minds back to Andy’s appointment as Chairman – 5th May 2023 for the avoidance of doubt – and the words of the new man at the helm when he said “I’m putting my whole life into this club and this community. I promise to work tirelessly to represent the club in a manner that supporters can take pride in. I want to share in their enthusiasm for the club and its success, and I want all of us to enjoy it together.
“The facilities and infrastructure are best-in-class, and we look forward to building on the club’s strengths to put Swansea City in the best possible position to achieve our shared goals.”
As with most things that have followed in the 21 months since they appear to be just hollow words and all too often the Chairman becomes vastly invisible despite promising improved communication with supporters that rarely happens although he has held some “individual audiences” but they have become few and far between and Andy’s interaction with the supporters seems to stretch not much further than a cosy chat with Trust representatives in the board room on a matchday. In his programme note’s ahead of yesterday’s defeat to Coventry he promised to hold a fans forum after the closure of his latest transfer window disaster when he wrote “I am also aware of the concerns that have been raised about improving our communication with supporters. We are committed to improving our connection with you, I believe in being as transparent as we can be with you, and clearly laying out our plans to take the club forward.
“We are planning to hold a fans’ forum once the transfer window closes to address your concerns and share our vision. Please do join us for that, and we will be able to update you on a number of areas.”
The last forum held by Coleman was one of the liveliest ever seen at the Swansea.com Stadium and you have to assume the next one will be equally so given the mess that has been the start to 2025. A manager who clearly had his head turned by the interest from West Brom, a captain who felt that he had no choice but to jump ship and a football team who have shipped twenty goals in seven games, picking up just a solitary point thanks to a Joe Allen header in that period. This is all going wrong on Andy Coleman’s watch in a very short period of time since the departure of Levien and Kaplan.
Andy Coleman is currently in his fourth transfer window as Chairman and this one promises to be as underwhelming as the other three. I have little doubt that we will have more arrivals in SA1 before the window closes on Monday evening but make no mistake these will not be long term targets who have taken meticulous planning to get over the line, they will be players that we have stumbled across due to some active agents or some random data programme that has thrown them out. At some point Coleman may wake up and realise that you do not scout players using solely data driven recruitment processes.
I have little doubt that at some point in the very near future Coleman will make a decision to part company with Luke Williams. Williams was his second managerial appointment and Coleman will despatch him in the same way he did Michael Duff to try and deflect attention away from him. Williams has not had the best of twelve months at Swansea and the results have not been what any of us desire but every time we have a player that has ay transfer value we sell them on at the first opportunity and tell people its all down to FFP and Profit & Sustainability rules – two very real impacts on a football club but most certainly not the only ones that are making us sell the family silver. The club continues to overspend in many departments off the pitch and the publishing of the club accounts at the end of this season will be interesting to see where that overspend is in so many ways even if they are almost twelve months out of date by the time they are published.
Andy Coleman will rightly be a worried man this morning. He knows he has to deliver strong in the last forty-eight hours of the window and he knows that he has to make some level of a decision regards the future of Luke Williams. The silence that comes from the man who promises improved communication is deafening, we have not heard a peep out of him during a dreadful January even with the Luke Williams saga with West Brom he was totally silent and people were left to guess and speculate over his feelings on the conduct of his manager. Or at least his manager’s representatives.
Coleman has form though for being silent and even his promise for a forum allows just for people to ask one question, listen to the answer he wants to give and then we move onto the next one. Andy is not open to a public challenge and these forums have become nothing more than tick box scenarios to make it look as if he is facing up but, as someone who hosted many of these over a time, that is never what they were and certainly in any I hosted it felt like it was a two way discussion and not just the chance to listen to the party line.
The problem with Swansea City and Andy Coleman is that we are stuck with him. He is an investor in a club that has multiple investors. Unless the remainder of the group have the same feelings on the silent one as us then he will remain in charge and left to oversee the next window, the next manager appointment and the watch to see which is the next piece of family silver he can sell off. At some point in the next two weeks we will hear about “how difficult the January window is” how “we never had a recruitment plan until he got here” and how “we have started the planning for the summer window and will act early in it learning the mistakes of this window” – anybody like the film Groundhog Day? We are now living our own reality of that although we know it better as Groundhog Window.
The other thing that cannot go unnoticed at the moment as well is the empty seats that are visible at the Swansea.com Stadium on matchdays. These empty seats are increasing in numbers and people are starting to vote more with their feet for the football served up on the pitch and the incompetence being shown behind the scenes. As we hit the middle of the season ticket sale window, these empty seats will have a big impact on the season ticket sales for next season and we could well be heading towards the lowest number of renewals for fifteen years which is a damming impact on the current state of the club.
It’s difficult to know where we go from here because – as we referenced earlier – Coleman is Chairman and we cannot see that changing and when we think of things not changing it is difficult to see anything other than continued regression under a man who has shown no sign of having any plan on how to turn this around.
Very worrying times here in SA1.
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