It was only a few days ago that I tweeted about my apathy towards the Swans and football in general; I’ve fallen out of love with the game due to the obscene amounts of money that have rendered competition obsolete and the behaviour of the Swans Board over a prolonged period has robbed me of my pride in our club too. Add into that my poor physical and mental health levels over the last few months and I’ve pretty much stopped writing on here with only the sad demise of Kevin Austin inspiring me to contribute…
…and then came yesterday’s programme notes from Huw Jenkins!
My gast wasn’t just flabbered, its soft underbelly was mercilessly tickled with a pink flamingo feather as Jenkins told one of the biggest porkie pies of all time as he insisted our summer transfer activity was all designed to take us straight back up to the Premier League. Even Donald Trump must be in awe of the audacity displayed by Jenkins yet again!
Here’s what our Huw had to say:
There was a big turnaround in the summer as major changes were the priority in terms of the staff and squad.
Those changes were made in order to provide us with a chance to quickly turn our fortunes around and mount a challenge for a promotion push to get back to the Premier League at our first attempt.
That’s right folks, Jenkins would have us believe that a summer of selling or giving away anything experienced not bolted down and replacing with a couple of signings for the Under23s and a freebie Declan John is a plan carefully constructed by the club’s hierarchy to secure an immediate return to the Premier League.
Clearly though Jenkins’ American masters didn’t get the memo to explain this cunning plan, and so when they met with their pet poodles in the Press in the aftermath of a disastrous summer transfer window they went to great lengths to excuse their actions by painting a doomsday scenario after relegation. It was also stressed that this season was a “reboot” and there was a “multi-year strategy” in place to regain Premier League status. Here’s a reminder of Steve Kaplan’s actual quotes:-
What we’re trying to do is take the hard medicine now so that we can build for the future.
I know that’s hard for supporters to accept. There will be more hard medicine to take but we want to build around our young guys.
We know there are no guarantees we will get promoted in the first year in the Championship. This is a multi-year plan to get back up and, when we get back up, be sustainable.
Whilst not agreeing with the severity of the cuts or the scandalous way Graham Potter was left with a weakened and unbalanced squad, most Swans fans would accept Kaplan’s admission that drastic action was needed to cut costs and that promotion would be an unlikely pipe dream this season. There was a broad acceptance that Graham Potter would need time to build a squad capable of competing consistently whilst the club worked to stabilise the finances.
However, it is clear that Kaplan and his accomplice Jason Levien were hiding behind the need to slash costs in order to excuse their total lack of outlay and their gross negligence in overseeing a squad overhaul that left just one fit striker, one experienced centre half but six wingers!
Selling season ticket renewals doesn’t sit well with the narrative of cutting costs and stabilising in the Championship though and so the Americans’ sock puppet Jenkins has put pen to paper in the programme to entirely rewrite recent history and suggest the club has built a squad that can deliver top flight football for next season.
It’s another blatant attempt to hoodwink the fan base but again it is so far divorced from reality that it is fooling no one.
Indeed, the more outlandishly cynical Swans fans out there might suggest that Graham Potter read the Chairman’s column and picked the side and formation for the first half against Wigan in an effort to make Jenkins look even more ridiculous than he already did…whether Potter had that in mind or not, it worked a treat!!
The very fact that Jenkins is still in place to make such outlandish proclamations a year after he bullishly conceded that relegation would leave his position untenable completely disgusts me. As does the weak efforts of the local media who should be bringing Jenkins and all his cronies at the club to account…Swansea City is a community asset of great importance and the media is meant to protect such things but it continues to fail dismally.
As such I felt it was the least I could do to wade through my own apathy and mental fatigue to call this clown out on his sickening scribblings – for what little it is worth.
Let’s hope the so called journalists at Wales Online can find time in February to stop monitoring Jay Bothroyd’s Twitter account for click bait and instead challenge Jenkins on his words yesterday in the face of what I believe will be another transfer window of drastic cost cutting proportions. I won’t hold my breath though.
Instead we’ll probably be reading in the Evening Post and the club programme how loaning out Bony, Narisingh, Dyer and Routledge – whilst paying half their collective wages – will strengthen Potter’s hand to seal a play-off place.
Actions have always spoken louder than words; they did in the summer and they will do so again in January. Please, for the love of God, someone at the club remind Huw Jenkins of this truism because his cack handed attempts at propaganda continue to do his cause more harm than good…
…but they do work like a shot of atropine through my pathetically worn out system!!