leight-on in the game
#4 Expectations
By Leighton Evans
Ten years on from the first taste of Premier League football for the Swans, ATFV’s crustiest columnist Leighton Evans takes stock of the expectations – real and imaginary – for the present day team. That’s after the little bitch-fest on the column name he included at the start of his submission to our esteemed Editor, which has rightly been left on the cutting room floor…
It’s fair to say this has not been an ideal summer for the Swans. Whatever the reasons, the painfully long goodbye between the club and Steve Cooper has left Russell Martin with very little time to implement his plans on and off the field.
In the debacle against Stoke we saw a team with little cohesion, and what seemed like very little match fitness, run off the park by Belisha Beacon-with-an-attitude-problem Sam Clucas and his pals.
To describe my reaction as ‘disappointed’ would be as gross an understatement as saying that Bafetimbi Gomis had some issues staying onside.
After the win against the Wurzels and an eventually comfortable League Cup win against Plymouth (first hat-trick in 10 years! Even a pessimist like me was taken aback by that stat) I feel I can discuss the prospects for the season and where we should be with a little more optimism than the rank terror I felt when Stoke were marauding through us like Genghis Khan’s first XI versus a field of sheep.
<Editorial note: this edition of Leight-on in the Game was written on the eve of the Preston game. Given the result and the nature of the defeat I checked on my columnist’s well being only to discover him crustier than ever and stubbornly unwilling to update this article>
An awful summer of transfer activity and off-the-field chaos is weirdly reassuring for me. Having been trudging down since January 1989, this summer reminded me a lot of the summers of the 90s where scanning the Evening Post for any news of transfers in or out, or anything happening at all would be a daily (depressing) ritual.
Fortunately, social media now means the masochism of a dreadful summer can be lived in real time on Twitter.
Mixing delusional takes on who we should be signing/who is having curry sauce and chips in Rossi’s with radio silence from the club and moronic clickbait from ‘journalists’ is no better in any way than the desert of information that Ceefax and the Post provided in the 90s.
This summer felt like a weird stasis while very important matters (Cooper, end of parachute payments, Ayew going) happened at a distance.
In the context of the last 15 years, this was probably the worst summer in terms of activity and general ambience that I can recall, despite the appointment of a young manager committed to returning the style of football we rightfully want.
As I said, the direness, and general inactivity of the summer brought a warm, nostalgic glow to my soul thinking back to the general amateurish approach and lack of activity that characterised my adolescent summers.
Not everyone shares my bizarre take on the summer though. It is quite understandable that the younger generation of Swans fans are not as taken with this sleepy summer as I am.
In an odd bit of straight thinking on my part, I realised that this season will be the 14th consecutive one in the top two divisions, and during that time we have either been in the Premier League or challenging in the Championship.
I was 9 when I first watched the Swans . A nine year old that watched the Swans for the first time as we ran out against Charlton at the Valley in August 2008 to end that long spell away from the top two divisions would now be 22 and would have no real knowledge of a grim summer like the one we have just endured.
Don’t get me wrong – it has been great to have this period of success, and any thoughts on my part of a return to the direness of the first decade and a half I endured watching the Swans are quickly smashed away from my mind, frequently with strong alcohol.
However, that experience has at least given me some perspective.
Yes, this summer (in terms of events and the agency of the club in these events) has been disappointing, even in light of being back in the stadium post-COVID.
However, compared to losing key players the day before the season begins, selling everything in sight and signing players that made your heart sink five minutes into their debut, then this has not been bad at all.
really, this is all a question of expectation.
In the League Cup game against Plymouth, I was taken by an observation about the opposition during a lull in the first half. Plymouth is about the size of Swansea.
We used to play them a great deal over the years, and I have a perfect record at Home Park of having seen Swansea lose every time I’ve been there (see also Reading – hate that place).
Are we vastly bigger than Plymouth? I’d say we have the better history but there are plenty of teams under us in the league with a more illustrious history.
What we have (undoubtedly) is a better recent pedigree. We should not be losing to or comparing ourselves to Plymouth Argyle based on the last 15 years.
My observation from the summer is that this is a correction towards that level. Now, this doesn’t bother me too much although I, obviously, want us as high as possible in the league.
If I started supporting the Swans in 2005 though, I’d be livid I expect. The success of the club in the past decade and a half has meant that how we perceive the club in the order of things is now greater than I could have imagined as a teenager.
With the lack of investment by the owners, end of the parachute payments and now entrenched reliance on the academy to provide players, we do need to ask whether we are seeing another shift in the status of the club like the shift begun in adversity in 2003 and accelerated by Martinez and others at the end of the 2000s.
This does not need to be back to Division 4, but it does need some reassessment about where we are and what the goals are for the club.
It seems like a healthy dose of realism does abound given the reactions to the Blackburn and Stoke defeats, but if this is a long-term adjustment rather than a product of a summer of poor management then that realism will be tested.
In a world where Jack Grealish is worth £100 million, realism is not a ready commodity, but maybe this summer has pushed us all towards thinking about the Swans in new, realist terms.
