When you look back on the summer transfer window and cast your verdict on whether Paul Watson and co. had a successful one or not, just remember this: the club signed a staggering THIRTEEN players and yet still managed to almost completely strip the squad of creative talent.

Alright, we weren’t exactly over burdened with little Lionel Messi clones by the time Watson took up his post in the summer after a period of Titsmarch leave, but we did have the free spirited Party Popper Piroe, the sometimes electric Olivier Ntcham (when he could be bothered to charge his batteries) along with the enigmatic Jamie Paterson.

A few weeks into proceedings and Ntcham had given us all a Gaelic shrug and wandered off to play for some unpronouncable place in Turkey and Piroe had been pimped to Leeds in return for a low ball £12m on the basis of him being a freebie at the end of this campaign.

That just leaves Paterson flying the flag for flouncing creatives in this Swansea squad.

Sadly, that means we are relying on a player with more misses than Henry the Eighth when it comes to ther hit-and-miss stakes!

But here’s the thing; the lad has all the talent and we need it now more than ever. We need him to show the sort of form he displayed last September to November.

We need the Pat-ohhh That’s Wonderful from that short time period and not the Pat-Oh Just Feck Off You Man-Child that we’ve been saddled with all too often since.

I remember reading the Jack Swan fanzine and our Editor had written a guest piece labelling Paterson, Ntcham and Michael Obafemi as ‘flaky’, pointing out how the efforts of young performers Ollie Cooper and Luke Cundle were putting senior professionals like them to shame.

Well Pato’s the only one left a few months on from that article, Ntcham disappearing in a puff of his own ego after refusing to play for Michael Duff (hmmm…guy was a visionary after all!) and Obafemi was farmed off to Burnley, not because of a lack of ability, but because it was getting too expensive to book him into a creche every day.

Obafemi’s influence on Paterson was clearly a bad one. Oh it made for a laugh or two thanks to the excellent Swans media team but these lads are paid to play football, not star in player announcement videos in a toilet cubicle. 

Without Obafemi’s giggling court jester presence I hoped to see Pato regain his focus and reclaim his form but it just didn’t happen throughout the back end of last season.

That’s led to him starting this term amongst the substitutes again and the whispers that he’d be moved on before August’s page was torn out of the calendar grew louder – but they remained that, just whispers. 

So now Pato is facing at least another three months as a Swans player but one on the fringes of a side that is struggling to make any impression in any opposition half. 

This is the moment for him to stand tall, act like a professional sportsman, and earn every penny of the damn decent wage we pay him. Because we damn well need him!

Paterson is the only asset we have right now that can make a little bit of time and space for himself and pick out a cheeky lofted pass, a wicked cross or a spot in the bottom corner of the net.

Matt Grimes could do it (we are led to believe) but the Captain keeps these elements of the game cunningly well hidden from the opposition (and the home fans) as he plays countless simple balls from within his own half.

New boy Charlie Patino looks very neat and tidy nut that’s as far as it goes, there’s no breathtaking chip over a defence in the lad’s locker.

Jay Fulton? The guy wears boxing gloves on his feet for the combative thrill of physical battle and it’s hard to pick a precision pass with a set of size seven Lonsdales on your dainties.

Liam Walsh is like a Frankenstein’s Monster in midfield – a box to box and creative force when you zap a 1,000 volts through him pre game, but most of the time the stitching holding his body together has come apart and he’s just a useless collection of body parts in the Treatment Room.

We just don’t have anyone in the middle or top end of the park with that little bit of ‘box office’ about them, that mercurial edge that can pick apart solid Championship defences. Well, nobody bar a player in Paterson that has been out in the cold longer than Captain Scott.

It’s time to properly thaw the lad out and find a way to tap into the talent that burns brightly at times – if Duff could do that it just might save his job.

So if and when you get your chance Jamie, grasp it with both hands and let your feet express themselves, and all you’ll hear from the Jack Army is..