A summer of change starts now…

And so the sun finally set on another EFL season this weekend with three play off finals and the closing of the Premier League season means that we now know the 23 opponents that we will face in the Championship next season.

Josh Windass’ 120th minute winner in the League One play off final gave us the 24th Championship team of next season after a weekend that saw Leeds, Leicester and Coventry also all be confirmed as 2nd tier teams for next season.

We have to wait a few weeks now for the dates to come through for the fixtures (Thursday June 22nd) with the season itself scheduled to start on the weekend of Saturday August 5th.

That season start is – incredibly – just 9 weeks away this coming weekend and the Swans will have a summer of change ahead of that with Russell Martin, Julian Winter and Josh Marsh all expected to be confirmed as departures in the coming days with Paul Watson expected to join Andy Coleman as a new arrival again in the course of the next few days.

Add to that the new manager hunt that is continuing it won’t be a quiet few days at the club with at least four managers linked with the role specifically over the course of the last few days alone.

Now though that the season is over the process of change is expected to gather momentum and Russell Martin is expected to have his appointment at Southampton confirmed either today or tomorrow.    He will take most of his key coaching staff with him which gives an additional challenge to the Swans on a new managerial hunt although similarly it will be an additional compensation from the Saints for the group.

Paul Watson will have overseen most of Luton’s promotion to the Premier League that they celebrated on Saturday (and beyond) but he is also expected to be in situ at the Swans in the next few days.    With his replacement already confirmed at Kenilworth Road, Watson will be rolling his sleeves up and involved from Day 1 although I suspect, as is often the case, he has probably already had some more conversations behind the scenes.

The departure of Winter has already been widely reported but nothing official yet from the club whilst Marsh has supposedly been absent for weeks – again nothing official from the club.   Widely known things that certainly seemed to upset Andy Coleman.

With new investors also due at the club in the form of Brett Cravatt and Nigel Morris are to join Coleman at the club at some stage soon and no doubt are having their own input into the background at the moment whilst we wait for their investment to be official.

Put all of that together then you have anything but a quiet period coming up and by the time the transfer window opens on 14th June then you can expect the club to look very different from the one that closed the season just a few short weeks ago.

Never a dull moment it seems?