Sheehan deserves the chance and the Swans could be fun again

It has been some time since anything was penned on these pagers with a variety of reasons behind the lack of writing from personal commitments through to just a general feeling of apathy that has surrounded the football club for too long.

I’ll be honest as well and say that several years of ‘fighting’ with the owners over a legal battle that was eventually conceded with not a single whimper by a Trust board currently more concerned with the occasional name check and prawn sandwich than anything further took away a connection with a football club that has played such a large part in my life.

I found myself on more Saturdays than I cared to remember taking a position where it was easier to watch the game from afar than it was to be at the ground as Luke Williams became the latest of a series of managers who was more concerned with the volume of possession than the effectiveness of what we could do with the ball.  Frankly we were boring to watch and it was just not enjoyable to spend an afternoon at the dot com anymore, a viewpoint that certainly seemed to be shared by many of the people who I converse with on a regular basis.

For several transfer windows we watched the incompetent Andy Coleman bungle about between excuses and sheer stupidity and whilst there have undoubtedly been some good signings during the past few windows that have been more than our fair share of pathetic signings based on some pointless data and sanctioned no doubt by a series of managers who were just happy to be at Swansea City.

Everything about our club told me that the identity that so many of us had worked hard to help build for ten years or more from around 2001 had been slowly eroded away and we were in danger of slipping back to the lower two divisions for the first time in closing in on twenty years.

Let’s not get carried away here on the basis that in the past few weeks we have put together a run of wins – five in total on the bounce is a pretty rare sight in Swansea – but also there is much to take away as positives from the club as we head towards the last two games of a season that looked as if it was going to deliver so little but now looks almost certain to end with a top half finish and the feeling that had we made certain changes a little earlier it could have been so much more.

Don’t get me wrong, had we made that change earlier then we could have possibly made the play offs but at the same time we are far from being ready at a proper tilt at a Premier League promotion again but the sheer fact that we have crossed the sixty point barrier this season tells me that there is much less work to be done and also highlights just how poor the last managerial decisions at the club have been.

Right now I would not be hesitating in giving Alan Sheehan the job for next season.  Forget all the talk of other candidates, Sheehan has proven that he is able to deliver results at this level and get a tune out of a squad that I am sure many of us will agree is weaker than it should be.   In our current unbeaten run of six games we have picked up four points from two away games against sides in the top four and that in itself should be enough to tell us that Sheehan has what it takes to do the job.

I’m not sure what our hesitation is here given the fact that he is producing better runs than at least his two predecessors (if not more) and he is doing it with an ability to make us half decent to watch in the process rather than the tippy tappy nonsense that we have been subjected to by people who worry about their own stats and a belief that they have reinvented football in the process.   Don’t get me wrong again that style of football can work but only when you have the right players to deliver it.   And under those managers we simply did not have it.

Then you have the changes off the pitch.   I am still a little cynical as to what Luke Modric will fully benefit the club with but there was little doubt last week that the announcement of his investment bought a media coverage with it.  And we have seen in the past what benefit that kind of media coverage can bring.   It was back in 2003 that the signature of Lee Trundle and his showboating gave us a media coverage that was was beyond anything a League Two club should get and it helped propel us forward and got an interest in Swansea City that we rode on for several seasons all the way to the Premier League.  If the Modric effect can replicate that then it can only be a good thing.

Off the pitch we have the recent change in ownership and the biggest kudos that I can give them is that they recognised the (poor) job that Andy Coleman was doing and, despite his status as an investor, they removed him from position with a view that it was the right thing to do to take us forward.   For a group that always proclaimed that actions need to speak louder than words this was one of the biggest actions that they could undertake and for that they should be applauded.

Last Friday was a home sell out at the dot com for the first time in an age as the interest seems to be back in Swansea City again and whilst personal circumstance means I didn’t see that game nor will I see the last home game of the season I do now have enough desire to look ahead to next season with the thought that watching Swansea City may just turn into being a fun past time once again.

We still have a big summer ahead as far as signings and that all important managerial appointment is concerned but the latter should be an obvious one now based on the past few months and then maybe just let him have a decent say into transfer matters and the Swansea City class of 2026 could maybe just turn into one of those golden vintages once again.  And maybe these pages will become alive once more as the apathy reduces…

We can all hope, can’t we?