It’s a Saturday afternoon and as has become the norm for Swans fans around the country another defeat this time at Kenilworth Road at Luton Town.<\/p>\n
None of this should come as a surprise and the result certainly wasn’t in the context of a turgid run of form that has seen the Swans drop from 4th to 17th with the second worst defence in the division.<\/p>\n
The loss at Luton was probably one of the better displays of late but still brought not a single point and a further tumble down the league and it could have easily been 3-0 to the home team before half time.<\/p>\n
Three wins in 20 games (almost half a season) is quite incredible, as is 5 clean sheets all campaign.<\/p>\n
What does come as a surprise to some fans, myself included, is how the manager is surviving this run of form and allowed without any real challenge to continue to deliver loss after loss.<\/p>\n
You can guarantee that at any other club in the Championship the change would have been made by now but nothing seems forthcoming despite the shoddy performances, awful body language from the players and a man wilting under the pressure.<\/p>\n
Now it would be unfair to ignore the disastrous January transfer window which saw nobody in and six out but it can’t really be denied that Russell Martin has been backed during his time at the club.<\/p>\n
To dispel that myth, the manager has been allowed to spend money on his own signings and the number through the door in the last 18 months is over 20.<\/p>\n
Permanent signings since summer 2021 (estimated):<\/strong> Darling (\u00a32m), Obafemi (\u00a31m), Downes (\u00a31m),\u00a0 Piroe (\u00a31m), Joseph (\u00a3800k), Fisher (\u00a3400k) Wood (\u00a3250k), Ogbeta (\u00a3250k), Allen (free), Walsh (free), Paterson (free), Ntcham (free)<\/p>\n Loan signings:<\/strong> Sorinola, Oko-Flex, Cundle, Stevens. Laird, Williams, Burns, Christie, Wolf.<\/p>\n Without signing on fees – a large chunk on its own – those initial figures total \u00a37m at a time when there’s a need to balance the books. How many Championship clubs (not those who have parachute payments) spent more?<\/p>\n That also excludes the returns of Whittaker and Benda, one of which was a target for Rangers and the other becoming a first team regular.<\/p>\n Is that a board not supporting a club with funds? It doesn’t look like it to me. There’s little doubt that there are real criticisms about their running of the club at times but I don’t understand how it can be argued they haven’t backed the manager. 21 signings in 18 months is not “asset stripping.”<\/p>\n This all simply points to a manager who is out of his depth and a club needing a change. Can anyone confidently say that the signings wanted in January would have strengthened the squad? I couldn’t. Not on the evidence of above.<\/p>\n The Swans have a week until their next fixture against in form Middlesbrough, ironically enjoying a drastic change of fortunes after a change in management.<\/p>\n Martin desperately needs a win because despite his claims yesterday that he is not under pressure from the board, their faith can only carry on for so long as the team plummets down the Championship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s a Saturday afternoon and as has become the norm for Swans fans around the country another defeat this time at Kenilworth Road at Luton Town. None of this should come as a surprise and the result certainly wasn’t in the context of a turgid run of form that has seen the Swans drop from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":459,"featured_media":77493,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[293,49,203,306],"tags":[636,665],"class_list":["post-77469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-first-team","category-news","category-opinion","category-reactions","tag-russell-martin","tag-the-2022-23-season"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77469","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\/459"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77469\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}