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Once a model of stability, Swansea hope for FA Cup upset against Manchester City to boost their long-term recovery
Rewind exactly a year and you will find perhaps the ultimate warning for any club tempted to treat the FA Cup with only secondary importance. Swansea City had been briefly galvanised under the management of Carlos Carvalhal. Premier League safety beckoned after a climb to 14th in the table and the visit of Tottenham Hotspur represented the club’s first FA Cup quarter-final since 1964.
Yet while the city might have been buzzing, a Swansea team containing five changes was flat and ultimately flattered by losing only 3-0. Carvalhal’s post-match reaction only compounded the frustration. “My focus is on staying in the Premier League and that does not change,” he said. “I am not disappointed. Good weather will follow.” What arrived was actually an immovable storm and Swansea would amass only two goals and two points in their remaining eight Premier League games. It was a moment on which the club’s history might conceivably have changed, even if the relegation that ensued was ultimately just the most traumatic symptom of a much longer series of bad decisions.
Mid-table in the Championship is now being viewed as a solid enough return for a club who, until the last few years, were routinely hailed as the Premier League’s ‘model’ and a template to others aspired.
To understand the fall you must also consider the ascent. Swansea had no great inherent advantages when Huw Jenkins became their chairman in 2002 at a time when the club’s very survival was in doubt and they only averted relegation to the Conference on the final day of the season. What followed was, in the words of former manager Roberto Martinez, “one of the most powerful and impressive stories not just in football but in sport”.
Swansea would move to the Liberty Stadium in 2005 and gain promotions apiece under Kenny Jackett, Martinez and Brendan Rodgers to reach the the Premier League in 2011. And there they would stay for a seven-season spell that included a League Cup win under Michael Laudrup, progress to the knockout phase of the Europa League and a record high Premier League finish of eighth under Garry Monk in 2014-15. What was so notable compared, say, to a club like Bournemouth was how success was not pinned to any one manager but rather a seemingly stable product of the wider ‘Swansea Way’ that placed such emphasis on a possession-based style of football.
Monk himself felt that the club “lost sight” under Laudrup on their previous desire to seize initiative but there was also a sense that the team went more counter-attacking under him. Some see that as pivotal while others point to Monk’s sacking as a catalyst. Few doubt that the summer of 2016, after Monk had been replaced by Francesco Guidolin and the club stuttered to a 12th place finish, was crucial in the decline.
“My biggest regret is not getting Brendan (Rodgers) back here,” says Jenkins. That summer also saw a missed chance to resign Joe Allen and the decision of some shareholders - but excluding the supporters’ trust - to sell a majority stake to American investors Steve Kaplan and Jason Levien. Kaplan and Levien kept Jenkins as chairman but would soon appoint Bob Bradley as manager. The most notable aspect of the Premier League’s second shortest managerial tenure was the concession of 29 goals in just 85 days and 11 games. What then followed was a club sucked into a cycle of what one insider calls “survival signings and survival managerial appointments”.
Paul Clement arrived with the team in serious relegation danger but tightened the defence and kept them up. Yet with Jenkins still operating as what has been described as “a de-facto director of football” and the club aiming to be self-sustainable financially, the 2017 summer transfer window was a footballing disaster. Out went Gylfi Sigurdsson, Jack Cork and Fernando Llorente as part of more than £70 million in sales and in came Sam Clucas, Wilfried Bony and Roque Mesa to add to the previously poor signings of Borja Baston and Jordan Ayew. Bony, who had arrived on deadline day, scored only three goals. Clement would be replaced by Carvalhal and his £18 million priority signing in January was Andre Ayew, who did not score a single goal in the fateful final run-in.
With Kaplan and Levein staying away from matches, Jenkins became the focal point for fan unrest that was further heightened last summer amid a conscious decision to immediately address the sudden £60 million loss of annual income. There would be no attempt to risk quickly spending their way back to the Premier League but rather offload most of the biggest earners and then try to steadily consolidate under an ambitious and progressive young manager in Graham Potter. It leaves a squad clearly lacking in depth - albeit with a thriving academy beneath - and facing the potential departure this summer of star player Dan James. He almost left in January and there is no real indication that he will extend a contract that expires next year.
The clear message from the ownership is that they remain committed in the long-term and the first really big change outside of the playing and coaching staff arrived last month when Jenkins stood down as chairman. “The current atmosphere within the football club on and off the football field saddens me very much and I find it very difficult to fight on in a football club I love but can no longer control,” he said.
A new head of football operations will be appointed and talks remain ongoing with Trevor Birch, the man who helped arrange Roman Abramovich’s takeover at Chelsea and who previously worked as chief executive at Everton, Leeds, Sheffield United and Derby.
More difficult decisions await, especially amid so many players out on loan, and Swansea’s longer-term recovery will depend on again largely getting these sort of judgments right. For the model club can never really exist in any extended form. They are all in a constantly fluctuating state of health that depends ultimately on the ongoing decision-making of its leaders.
Few will realistically expect Swansea to present Manchester City too much of a challenge in Saturday's FA Cup quarter-final but, as they discovered on this very stage last season, the way in which you lose can also hold considerable importance going forward.