The_Guardian_-_2016-12-29

“we want Bradley out”, the former USA coach was none the wiser as to what was the best starting XI
to select from the woefully ill-equipped squad that he inherited.
Swansea’s American owners, Stephen Kaplan and Jason Levien, had been determined to stand by
their man and give Bradley a chance to bring in a few players of his own in January. Yet the West
Ham match shredded those plans. The performance was abject and the atmosphere inside the Liberty
Stadium poisonous. Swansea had been well beaten for the third successive game and Bradley had
reached the point of no return.
His position was untenable and there is no escaping the fact that results were awful under his watch,
yet anybody conducting a wider inquest into where everything has gone wrong at Swansea, in
particular the question as to how a model club have turned into such a mess in the space of a season
and a half, would not spend too long going through Bradley’s 85 days as manager.
Instead the spotlight is likely to shine an unfavourable light on the people running the club, especially
the chairman, Huw Jenkins, who was as influential as anybody in the rags-to-riches story behind
Swansea’s rise from the depths of the Football League to the top flight. Once the man who could do
no wrong, Jenkins has presided over a number of desperately poor decisions in recent times, both
managerially and in the transfer market, and the result is that Swansea have lurched from one crisis to
another.
Perhaps the most alarming aspect of the club’s decline is the speed with which everything has
unravelled. In May last year Swansea finished eighth in the Premier League with a club-record points
total. Their attractive and distinctive playing style – “The Swansea Way” – was deeply ingrained and
integral to their success. Garry Monk, a bright, young, homegrown manager was in charge of the team,
supporter representation on the board won admirers, and the club operated in the black. Swansea, in
short, provided a blueprint for many to follow. Fast-forward 19 months and they have become just
another Premier League club.
Monk lost his job last December after a bad run of results and it will not have escaped the attention of
many Swansea supporters that while they were being thumped 4-1 by West Ham this Boxing Day,
their former manager was overseeing a victory at Preston by the same scoreline for his promotionchasing
Leeds United side.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the decision to sack Monk, the bottom line is that so much of what
Swansea have done since has made little sense, arguably no more so than when Jenkins announced in
May that he was giving Francesco Guidolin a permanent contract to continue as manager. It was a
decision that stunned people within the club, never mind outside, and meant that Swansea missed a
crucial opportunity to rebuild.
Guidolin had been appointed in January on a short-term basis after a protracted search for Monk’s
replacement initially ended with Alan Curtis, the highly respected and long-serving first-team coach,
being given the job until the end of the season. Curtis, however, was asked to stand aside 11 days
after being handed the reins to make way for the Italian. Swansea ended up finishing 12th, on the face
of it vindicating the decision to bring in Guidolin, yet there was little appetite among staff and players
for him – a likeable man but uninspiring coach – to stay on as manager.