The news that the Wales captain is closing in on a new deal comes at the end of a week where he has been linked with a move to the Premier League with figures of \u00a35m+ being banded about in some quarters.<\/p>\n
But with Ash set to captain the Swans in the absence of Garry Monk and Alan Tate on Saturday, Rodgers confirmed that talks were close to agreeing a new deal at the club.<\/p>\n
“The speculation doesn’t concern me because Ash is very close to agreeing a new deal,” he told the Evening Post “There’s no doubt for me that he is a Premier League centre-half.<\/p>\n
“I have watched players from this level stepping up \u2014 I had one of them at Watford in Mike Williamson, and Roger Johnson\u00a0is another one who made the move.<\/p>\n
“I don’t just think Ash can play in the Premier League, I think he can play high up it.<\/p>\n
“He can defend \u2014 he is quick, strong and good in the air \u2014 but the thing that sets him apart is that he can also play football.<\/p>\n
“You need to be able to play at the big clubs, and Ash has that ability.<\/p>\n
“There’s no question he will get there, but we hope he will get to the Premier League with Swansea.<\/p>\n
“If it doesn’t happen then as a manager and a club, we respect that there’s always a possibility players will move on.<\/p>\n
“But at this moment, Ash is happy with us.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The news that the Wales captain is closing in on a new deal comes at the end of a week where he has been linked with a move to the Premier League with figures of \u00a35m+ being banded about in some quarters. But with Ash set to captain the Swans in the absence of Garry […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":453,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/453"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17737\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}