Swansea City deliver a hugely forgettable campaign littered with mistakes on and off the pitch

It is hard to believe when you look back now but there was a wave of optimism that sat in many quarters at the start of the season with the Swans under the leadership of a new manager, a new Chairman and new signings into the double figures bracket was seen as a statement of intent that the club had a very different feel.

Nine months on and it will be a campaign that does not live in the memory for any more than the statistics say that it should after a campaign that saw us dull to watch for more periods than we threatened to entertain and it saw a host of decisions being made off the pitch that will be questioned for much longer than the season will be remembered.    Players arrived in the summer transfer window that were shipped back out in the January one whilst the final day decision to give game time to Bashir Humphreys and Charlie Patino raised eyebrows for the logic of that decision on the pitch.   It simply did not make any sense at all.

This all happened around a situation where the club seemingly was losing money hand over fist with further “investment” required almost on a monthly basis in the second half of the season, a legacy from some incredibly bad decisions.   None of those bad decisions topped the appointment of Michael Duff who was clearly the wrong fit for Swansea City.   Credit here to those people who called that out on day one although one of his faults appeared to be that he was not Russell Martin.  Either way though he was the wrong fit, the football told us that relatively quickly and we have to give some credit here to the ownership for making the decision to go back on the appointment before Christmas arrived.   An expensive mistake and one that rightly led to many questioning the skills of those behind the scenes.

Paul Watson was another who came very much under the spotlight.   His role at Luton was questioned by many as to how much in depth football experience he had when he arrived at Swansea.   Along with his boss, Andy Coleman, they defended his experience at the last fans forum in Swansea of the season in what was certainly the most hostile of forums that I have seen in almost twenty years of attending and hosting them.

Coleman himself moved his family to Swansea although he didn’t like to talk about it much and keeps insisting that he has invested heavily into the club.  Trouble is with his investment is that it sits within the LLC that was set up to buy the club in 2016.   The exact makeup of the LLC remains a mystery, not new news but it’s the way it always has been and suspect it is the way it will always be.  It will also leave a question as to how much Coleman, and his right hand man in Ken Gude, get paid as it seems almost certain that the funding of their salaries comes from the LLC and not directly from the football club.   What we can be almost certain of though is that neither of them do it for the love of the club no matter what they like to say about sleepless nights after poor performances.   Of which there have been plenty.

There were positives.   The full backs in Josh Key and Josh Tymon were great additions and Ronald looks another one from the January window (if he can figure out that a game has two halves he will be any better) and there were improved performances this season from Harry Darling and Jamie Paterson which would have put them up there in the voting when the player of the year awards were cast.  The winner of course of that vote was a worthy winner in Carl Rushworth in goal with the only problem being is that he belongs to Brighton & Hove Albion.   There are talks we assume ongoing to see if we can bring him back next season but if those talks don’t come to fruition then a goalkeeper will be right at the top of our list because Andy Fisher is not the answer.

On the whole though our loan signings disappointed.   Humphreys, Patino and Ashby all arrived in SA1 with ringing endorsements from fans of the clubs from which they arrived.  Each of them flattered to deceive and certainly none of them were good enough to hold down regular places in the starting line up which comes back to why we decided to play two of them in the last game of the season.

Up front remains another position of priority for the Swans.   Giving Liam Cullen a year’s extension gives us one option for next year but, and this is said with no disrespect to Liam, we do not want to be in a position where we rely solely on him every week next term.   Jamal Lowe was a more than decent loan signing but he is being linked heavily with a load of other clubs and the moment and the smart money is that he will be somewhere other than South West Wales next season.

And then there is Jerry Yates.   As hit and miss signings go this is very much a miss which is probably as ironic as it gets.   I have no doubt there is a player in there somewhere but he is someone that does not fit at all into a Swansea City side and this season has certainly hit his confidence as a player hard.  The problem that I cannot overcome with Yates is just how much of our transfer budget that we blew on the player and that will be a big part why the recruitment team has been so heavily criticised this season.

The summer ahead is a huge one for the Swans.   Some of the games towards the end of the season suggested that there was a step up in performance and entertainment but then we were treated to the drivel we saw on the last day of the season that reminded us of so many performances within the previous forty odd league games.   Maybe it was a good thing as it prevented a false sense of security going into the summer and reminded everyone that there is much work to be done over the next eight to ten weeks.

The decisions made – mostly off the pitch – not just this season but for many seasons beforehand have cost us hugely this season and it has also resulted in dropping attendances as fans vote with their feet due to the quality of the performances.  It has been said in more than one quarter this season that fans are feeling as far removed from the club now as they have been at any time in the past twenty years.  Another challenge for Coleman and his LLC mates to work through this summer, football club owners need the fans onside behind them but for that to fully happen, and we have said this before, there needs to be transparency in a position where there is very little at the moment.

It has to be said I am more than glad that this season is over.  Too many indifferent performances, too much dull football and too many words that were not backed up with any firm actions.   There were high points albeit not many and we certainly cannot live off the memory of yet another comprehensive win over Cardiff as our seasons have to be about more than that and Luke Williams will be more aware of that.

Which brings us to the closing point.   Williams is probably the right man for Swansea City but he has to be backed with the players who can bring the way he wants to play into action.   Ronald in the January window is a great example of that and if the recruitment team can pull off more signings of that nature and less of the Yates and Pedersen type signings then maybe he can turn us into a half decent Championship team once again.  And that would also serve to reduce significantly the questions about Watson’s past roles as when you are performing in your current one people tend not to worry about the previous ones.   But you have to perform once.

So that was the 2023/24 season, let’s file it under the archives and move on as we have a huge summer ahead, now we get to see if everyone is up to it.