I went to sleep on Monday night thinking that, for once, Swansea City had managed to have the sort of low-key, relatively uneventful transfer deadline day that supporting a mid-table Championship club is all about.
Despite much consternation online about the American owners’ unwillingness to ‘go for it’ and give handsome Russell Martin the sort of team that his unique and ambitious idea of football probably deserves, it made sense to me that drastically overhauling the squad could wait until the summer when it could have a greater chance of leading to immediate tangible success.
Even though the Championship is famously unpredictable and ever-changing, and a collection of wins can take a team from going nowhere to booking a hotel for Wembley, and a series of defeats can see the warm embrace of mid-table lost to the icy despair of away trips to Gillingham and Accrington (combined roof coverage of away end = 0 square feet), Swansea probably aren’t going anywhere this season.
Despite currently sitting 19th in the league table, there is still a healthy points gap between ourselves and the bottom three. Of the sides currently residing in the drop zone, Barnsley’s new manager bounce has taken them from 23rd-place to rock-bottom of the table, Derby’s competence on the pitch has been left with too much to do thanks to their incompetence off it, and Peterborough’s penchant for letting in goals suggests they find more fun in bouncing between the second and third tier than stabilising in the former. Reading’s doom-spiral looks to be the most likely challenge to this three-pronged tragedy.
It would not be ridiculous to suggest that this current Swansea team could challenge the play-offs had it been bolstered in the right areas. We saw in the season under Graham Potter that once an innovative playing style has been imbedded and altered it can produce results, and results along with performances back in October and November suggested that we are capable of matching many of the sides that currently sit in more flattering positions in the table.
But Martin is not Potter. He currently has a year-and-a-half at Milton Keynes along with six months with us under his belt as a head coach, Potter had been in coaching roles for over a decade by the time he arrived in South Wales in the summer of 2018. Martin has tried things and they have not worked so far this season, it is more than likely that this will continue to happen as he learns about himself as a coach, and therefore expecting a clutch of signings to suddenly iron out all of the issues this team currently has and propel us back into the top-six race would have been ambitious at best.
Martin himself has stressed the need for the club to rely less on loanees and instead recruit and develop their own talent, and therefore bringing in costly temporary additions to help us climb from 19th to 18th would appear to make very little sense.
Although the current owners have never shown themselves to be the type that is willing to put down serious money for established second-tier players, the current issues at both Derby and Reading have understandably led to the profit and sustainability drum being banged at pretty much all Championship clubs that are not receiving parachute payments. Swansea are one of very few clubs in the division that are actually breaking even financially, but getting overly-excited in a January window when there is little on the line has the potential to be a neat starting point for financial armagedon in a few years time.
By the time the window closed, Swansea had brought in five players and allowed six players that had featured in the first team to depart. The window had been made more complicated by Jamie Paterson’s contract dispute and Manchester United’s decision to re-call Ethan Laird, but the late addition of wing-back Nathanael Ogbeta and the arrival of ball-playing goalkeeper Andy Fisher from Martin’s former employers meant we quite possibly ended the month with a squad more suited to Martin’s methods than the one that began it.
It was only the day after that it began to feel like yet another window of failure under the current ownership group.
It was revealed that we had missed out on signing Ryan Longman from Brighton because the hierarchy stateside had pulled out of the deal at the last minute. Ryan Giles, who had done well before Christmas in a struggling Cardiff side, had supposedly been willing to join on loan and provide at least a temporary solution to our season-long issues at left wing-back but the deal was passed on and he joined Blackburn instead. Most painfully for anyone who watched Wednesday night’s Old Firm game, newly-signed Celtic attacking midfielder Matt O’Riley was apparently available for some form of structured deal that would have seen us pay little upfront for a player that looks destined for great things and could have gone a long way to solving our issues creating chances to score.
Whilst these additions would still have represented a significant outlay in our current financial state, they all seemed worth adding to the current squad. Longman can play both at wing-back and further forward, and would provide pace and directness that our current attack is lacking. Even though Giles would have only been a temporary addition, he seems perfectly suited to a wing-back role we had no suitable candidate to fill before Ogbeta arrived. Martin having already worked with O’Riley is enough of a reference in itself, and the way in which he was capable of finding space and playing one-touch to speed the game up against Rangers for his new club in midweek created a very real feeling of envy.
There was little time to contemplate the most recent additions to the ghosts of transfer windows past though as we hosted Luton Town at the Swansea.Com on Tuesday evening, sporting a brand new formation as Martin decided he had finally had enough of using a right-footed centre-back at left wing-back. Although the shape of the team was pretty fluid, there did appear to be a notional back four with three central midfielders in front of them and a much-changed front three of Hannes Wolf, Michael Obafemi and Cyrus Christie trying to address recent problems in attack.
Once we had finally managed to escape our own penalty area around the 10 minute mark, the new formation actually threatened to work. Obafemi could only steer a glorious Matt Grimes pass straight at the ‘keeper. Wolf looked more comfortable and was more involved thanks to the space afforded to him in a wider position. The midfield trio of Grimes, Flynn Downes and Olivier Ntcham looked capable of keeping the ball between them for the entirety of the evening if they had so desired.
The way we are trying to play this season can provide a welcome distraction from issues as trivial as who we are or are not signing in the transfer window to the very real perma-doom of Covid-19. When we successfully evade the first line of an opponents’ press before Grimes or Downes or both find the perfect combination of passes to release Ntcham in space, and he does something unexpected to pick out a team-mate in space before we invariably waste the opportunity with one pass too many or a poor decision in the final third, it is exciting, it makes you feel things about football, it highlights how watching sport goes beyond simply winning or losing.
Just as this incarnation of the Swans was making me feel all profound once again, Kyle Naughton slumped to his haunches on the halfway line. Naughton has shown he is undeniably our most competent defensive player when in possession of the ball. Even though it felt as though it had been an age since he had last played the quasi-conventional right-back role he started the Luton game in, his intelligence meant he was regularly taking up a position more akin to a midfield player when we had the ball, opening up space for Christie to rampage down the right flank.
Naughton was forced off in the 22nd minute and suddenly the reality of how short the transfer window had left us was exposed all over again. With no natural right-back on the bench, Christie’s promising start to life as an out-and-out winger was brought to an end disappointingly early.
Naughton’s replacement Korey Smith has been criticised for his inability to contribute in attack as the team has struggled for both goals and creativity over the past few games. Having to use him in an advanced midfield role does again point to the lack of options Martin has available to him, but he did utilise his former Norwich team-mate in a more conventional box-to-box role against Luton, pushing Ntcham into a position wide on the right.
Smith was perfectly adequate in the 68 minutes plus stoppages that he spent on the field, offering no less than he does when things are going well and he’s cast as the type of battler in the middle of the park that is essential to a successful team, and no more than he does when things are not going so well and it’s suggested that his lack of technical prowess is one of the most significant reasons for the team’s struggles.
It was the impact that his introduction had on the rest of the team that caused problems.
Since replacing Laird, Christie’s directness in the final third has possibly added an element to the team that was not there beforehand, and as he is effectively a winger when used in the wing-back role. Moving him back to a more nominal right-back role when Naughton was forced stunted his influence on the game but also reduced the impact Ntcham could have.
As wonderful as the Frenchman is with the ball at his feet, his talents were wasted in a wide position. His lack of pace meant Luton no longer had to worry about us getting in behind them, and suddenly everything became very slow and congested. The early momentum had dissipated, we struggled to stretch the game as we had when Christie was further forward and the space, that Wolf and Grimes in particular had been enjoying, closed up. It was Luton who finished the half the stronger, looking dangerous when we began to cough the ball up in midfield and from the set-pieces that would often follow.
But Martin clearly has something more than immaculate facial hair and a conceptual understanding of football about him. After the warm glow of the wins against Cardiff and West Brom in October, we seemed to swing wildly between prioritising control of games and subsequently struggling to create chances, and giving up an element of control, becoming more dangerous in attack, but also leaving ourselves more open at the back – summarised by the two halves of the win at Barnsley at the end of November.
Since returning from the Covid-enforced break, it does seem as though control has once again been prioritised.
We by no means played badly in the goalless draw at QPR in the midweek fixture before the Luton game, but it was a lifeless encounter between two sides that almost seemed afraid to open up and expose themselves to the attacking capabilities of the other. Amongst the dreariness, a delightful passing move that ended with Joel Piroe seeing a shot saved was probably our only decent chance to score, yet served as another reminder of how good this style of football might one day be.
Martin changed the system again in the second half against Luton, returning to the shape we have seen used most commonly for much of the campaign. Wolf became an extremely forward-thinking left wing-back, Christie moved forward slightly, Ntcham was brought back into the middle.
There was not a great deal of slicing open of the opposition midfield or edge-of-your-seat wing-play, but we were in control of the game. Luton were no longer pressing as aggressively either, meaning we could effectively set up camp in their half as we so often seem to do against most sides at this level.
We by no means created an unmissable number of chances, but Ben Cabango hit the post with a header, Ryan Bennett probably could have found the net with the rebound, Obafemi should have done more than shoot straight at the ‘keeper when well-positioned in the Luton box. It felt as if a goal were to arrive it, it would be for Swansea.
A goal did arrive. For Harry Cornick at the other end of the field. No one challenged Cameron Jerome for a long ball upfield and suddenly Luton had the ball in front of our defence with orange shirts charging towards goal. Cornick finished well at the end of a well-executed move, but our inability to even get near any of the players involved in the goal meant it all looked a bit too soft and a bit too easy.
Given the trouble we have had in breaking teams down, falling behind at a relatively late stage always seemed likely to be terminal. Piroe headed a decent chance straight at the ‘keeper shortly after arriving from the bench, but the game became incredibly congested around the edge of the Luton box.
As if to emphasise our lack of natural options in wide areas even further, we managed to end the game with Wolf on the right and Christie on the left as a desperate attempt to try and inject some life into a comeback.
It was not to be.
It was not a bad performance, we probably had the better chances of the two teams and some of the nervousness playing out from the back is perhaps to be expected when you have a goalkeeper making his Championship debut in a system that demands a lot of him whilst also having team-mates adjusting to a new formation in front of him.
It lacked the control that had typified some of the better performances back in autumn, but Luton are well-coached and energetic, with Nathan Jones at the helm they have disrupted teams who have invested far greater sums into their playing squad and had far longer to get used to the ideas of their manager.
Given we have had a run of five games in 17 days on the back of nearly a month without one, it should be little surprise that other teams are currently looking sharper or fresher, and perhaps that is proving decisive in the low-margin games we are either drawing or losing. A bigger squad would help to address this, but it rarely feels we are being out-run or overpowered physically by opponents, rather we do not quite have the requisite quality to make such a detailed approach to winning games operate at its full potential.
There should be no issue with Martin trying things, he is in his coaching infancy, but every time a new issue rears its head and he is forced to sacrifice part of the purity of his footballing vision by using a player in an unnatural position or alter the system to suit those he can use, it feels like we take a step back in terms of progressing as a team and he moves another step closer to realising he may well be better off elsewhere.
These teething problems could so easily have been soothed somewhat with a more ambitious transfer window, even if this January window is unlikely to define our season.
It could however have greater implications in the long-term. Graham Potter is now thriving in a well-structured and harmonious environment, and it is not beyond the realms of possibility that we would have made the play-offs playing wonderful football in his solitary season in South Wales had he not had to suffer two catastrophic deadline days across his two transfer windows in charge. For all the lack of joy associated with the football played under Steve Cooper, we were genuine contenders for automatic promotion at this point of last season and could quite feasibly be back in the Premier League at this moment had he been allowed to bring in a Championship-ready forward rather than two untested MLS players on loan in January 2021.
Martin is yet to directly challenge how Levein and Kaplan are running the club, but disappointing transfer windows no doubt play on the mind of promising young managers when new suitors come calling. Setting up deals to bring in players from other clubs before pulling out of them at the final stages impacts your ability to do business with the club and agent involved in the future. Failing to show ambition when building a squad can make it harder to attract players to the project Martin is building, or dare I say it, attract a replacement for Martin to oversee the project in the future.
None of the deals that could supposedly have been done in the window that has just passed were of the £6million for 28-year-old Bradley Johnson variety that has left Derby supporters praying that an individual as odious as Mike Ashley will save them. O’Riley, Longman and Giles could have been brought in for the same sort of fee that Nottingham Forest have just spent on Sam Surridge, and all are highly-rated and young enough to earn the club several times that amount in transfer windows to come.
The continued presence of the current ownership group means that we should probably enjoy any nice things associated with the club whilst we can. We have 19 league games left to play in the next 13 weeks, and it should only take five or so more wins to be sure of survival (we still have games left against all five of the teams below us). Our most exciting player in the first half of the season is still with us despite looking set to leave, and he is seemingly going to be involved at the weekend. Even though the squad is worryingly thin in places, there is now a player comfortable operating in every position within Martin’s favoured formation, and we saw more than enough earlier in the campaign to suggest that his idea of football can produce results at this level.
I don’t think anyone associated with the club is desperate to see a Bournemouth-style splurge on the playing squad, Martin already appears both convincing enough in conveying his ideas and capable enough of helping players adapt to his system to avoid one. But expecting him to make do and mend with a collection of signings that are a legacy of three different head coaches and three changes in playing style will at best mean that it takes longer for success to arrive, and at worst mean he ends up having little reason to stay when a better job is offered.
It does seem pretty mystifying that he was convinced to abandon a burgeoning project in Milton Keynes for a seismic rebuild with us last summer. It was surely obvious that any support he would receive from the current ownership group would be minimal, and with parachute payments drying up and the impact of Covid-19 someway from surpassing, it could have only been expected that the issues that frustrated both Potter and Cooper would be amplified, particularly given how specific a game model Martin is attempting to implement.
With all of the change that the club has experienced since relegation from the Premier League, the owners and their lack of interest in the club’s success has been one of the few constants. They have managed to see off two head coaches who varied in popularity but enjoyed success in their own way, and given how impressive Martin has been during a tumultuous period, it may not be long before they lose another ahead of time.
Dan Evans 