Swansea City looked to be leading the chase for Werder Bremen left back Lee Buchanan but news filtered through in recent days that he was heading to the UK for a medical… and it wasn’t in Wales.<\/p>\n
Birmingham City announced his arrival yesterday for a figure thought to be around \u00a31.3m leaving Michael Duff and the powers that be at the Swansea.com Stadium searching further for a much needed left sided wing back.<\/p>\n
It seemed fairly sure that both Harrison Ashby and Carl Rushworth will be arriving on season long loans upon the conclusion of their clubs’ respective tours in America but Newcastle boss Eddie Howe did appear to pour cold water on his man leaving the club imminently.<\/p>\n
“Jamal Lewis is probably the nearest to securing a loan move to Watford,\u201d confirmed Howe. \u201cThat is closest in the pipeline, and that will get done in the next 24 hours. The other two (Kuol and Ashby)? No, nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lewis himself had been suggested as a target for the Swans but with the player known to be on high wages it seemed a non starter from the beginning. So with nine days until Birmingham where do we go next?<\/p>\n
Should Ashby arrive it won’t really solve the problem as it would more than likely see Josh Key moved to the left… a square peg in a round holes.<\/p>\n
If there’s one thing that was clear from both the Oxford and Bristol Rovers games then it was the weakness on the left side without a proper left footed defender. Much like the shortage of a genuine right wing back made life difficult last season.<\/p>\n
Kyle Naughton, Azeem Abdulai and – towards the end of the game on Monday night – Joel Cotterill were utilised on the left but the fact that both goals for Rovers came from that side further enhances the need for reinforcements.<\/p>\n
In the aftermath of that game Duff suggested that he needed 4 to 5 more signings this summer and it’s easy to see where those are needed even discounting Joel Piroe’s future at the club.<\/p>\n
“You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to see we need a left-back because I don’t envisage Kyle Naughton playing as a left wingback all season,” Duff said.<\/p>\n
“So there are bodies. Two are coming in, but we’ve had to wait a little bit longer in terms of loans because we’re waiting for the parent club. But they’re pretty much done.<\/p>\n
“But we’re still looking to add. A lot of young players on the bench today, but it’s a case of bringing the right ones in.”<\/p>\n
We wait patiently!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Swansea City looked to be leading the chase for Werder Bremen left back Lee Buchanan but news filtered through in recent days that he was heading to the UK for a medical… and it wasn’t in Wales. Birmingham City announced his arrival yesterday for a figure thought to be around \u00a31.3m leaving Michael Duff and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":459,"featured_media":84460,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[293,49,203],"tags":[1544,1524,665],"class_list":["post-84459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-first-team","category-news","category-opinion","tag-lee-buchanan","tag-michael-duff","tag-the-2022-23-season"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84459","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=84459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84459\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}