Consolidated in the Premier League, with a promising young manager, and a recent domestic honour to their name, Swansea City's ambition in the coming years must surely stretch beyond simply staying in the top flight.

Overview

These two sides were promoted into the Premier League together in 2011 — Rangers as champions and the Swans as play-off winners. Neil Warnock’s side were better than Brendan Rodgers’ team that year, as a 4-0 romp at Loftus Road on Boxing Day featuring that goal from Adel Taarabt testified to. But QPR put the success together inside 18 months, led by the appointment of Warnock as manager after a tumultuous period of carnage under the ownership of Flavio Briatore. Once in the Premier League QPR abandoned the players who’d got them there, went chasing big names on big wages, and worked themselves into a world of difficulty, £160m worth of debt, and a relegation back to the Championship.

Swansea’s promotion, on the other hand, was the latest step on a steady development cycle which had seen them move to a new stadium, and climb from the very bottom of the Football League — and almost the Conference too at one stage — back into the top division for the first time since the 1980s. Once there they simply kept doing what had been working for them for years and have consolidated well in the top flight, while winning the League Cup and enjoying a European campaign that the long-suffering Shepherd’s Bush regulars would kill for. Swansea’s success has been a regular stick to beat QPR with during their more feckless moments — the club Rangers could have been.

Swansea’s foundations are so solid that they’ve been able to survive problems and upheaval and not have it deviate them from their course. Prior to Rodgers’ appointment they took a chance on Paulo Sousa following his departure from QPR, only to find the king of the 0-0 draw a rather frustrating man to have in charge of your team. When he then up and left for Leicester at the end of his first season in charge it could have set the club back at least 12 months, and yet in came Rodgers and up they went again.

When he was subsequently tempted by Liverpool, and the team suffered a talent bleed that saw key men like Joe Allen, Scott Sinclair and Gylfi Sigurdsson leave, they simply went out and appointed Michael Laudrup, worked the lower end of La Liga beautifully for bargains and ended up lifting a trophy at Wembley. That QPR’s expensively assembled gang of mercenaries started their dire 2012/13 campaign with a 5-0 home humiliation by the Swans wasn’t lost on anybody.

When things went slightly stale under the Dane — the burden of the extra European fixtures, the loss of star striker Michu to injury, the difficult second season syndrome all factors — they made a risky mid-season change of boss usually associated with far less stable, more volatile, less successful clubs. Garry Monk, a former player with no previous managerial experience, stepped in and off they’ve gone again. The board, led by chairman Hugh Jenkins whose shrewd management of the club has been a big factor in the success, has developed a knack of choosing new managers whose style and ethos fits with the club and isn’t a great deal different from their predecessors — that way, no need for a mass fire sale of players and a dozen or more new ones coming in simply because the new manager thinks completely differently to the old one.

Swansea can lose star players in clutches all at once, they can lose managers, they can sack managers, and yet their steady upward trajectory continues. A new training ground has been built. They’re profitable as well, although the directors’ decision to pay themselves a £2m dividend from the £16m profit announced a year ago did have The Guardian wringing its hands slightly. They have an elected member of the supporter’s trust — which owns 20% of the club — on the board.

What the Swans are about to become is an interesting test case in ambition. They’re not going to win the Premier League, nor qualify for the Champions League — although Southampton are going all out to tear up that conventional wisdom this season and more power to them. But cups and Europa League campaigns are, as they’ve already shown, well within their capabilities.

Ian Gallagher, the Leicester City fan we spoke to in the build up to Saturday’s match, made a comment which was picked up by a few of you on the message board. Asked what the short, medium and long term aims for the club were Ian, honestly, admitted that Leicester are basically aspiring to be a midtable Premier League team. Just stay in the top flight. That is the aim for so many clubs at the moment, including our own, and it’s pretty depressing. Sport should be about cups and medals and increasingly football at the highest level in this country isn’t concerned with either of those things — even Arsenal and Liverpool openly state they’re aiming for fourth each year.

Swansea have shown resilience to change of management, loss of players, long runs of poor form, injury crisis and more. They’re financially sound. With the Premier League television money now ridiculous, and the Championship reigning in the spending of its clubs, the gap between the top two divisions in this country is going to widen considerably, and the three promoted teams are going to be in deep trouble every year moving forwards, far more than they ever were before. For the middle of the road Premier League teams, of which Swansea and Stoke are probably the two most secure financially and on the pitch, this should remove a little bit of the threat and fear of what a relegation could do to them. These teams should be throwing caution to the wind in cup competitions, seeing Europa League campaigns as an aspiration rather than a potential headache, aiming for more than simply getting to 42 points every year.

It’ll be interesting to see where a club renowned for shrewd strategy and sound judgement tries to take itself in this climate.

Scout Report

The general feeling is that Monk has allowed Swansea to be a little more direct than they have been since Roberto Martinez first revolutionised the style of play here. With half-man-half-beast Wilfried Bony charging around up front Swansea are said to pose a physical threat as well as the skilful one we’ve seen from them in years to come. Last year they were second only to Arsenal for completed passes in the Premier League, and this year they’re only halfway up the table in that particular stat showing a propensity to go a bit longer at times. But we’re not exactly channeling Bobby Gould’s Wimbledon side of the 1980s here — prior to the Arsenal fixture they’d forced just 19 corners in ten Premier League games which was the lowest total in any of Europe’s top divisions. They also hadn’t scored a headed goal to this point either — although that soon changed.

They adopted a very solid 4-4-1-1 shape from the off, with Gylfi Sigurdsson playing in the number ten role behind Bony in attack — the Icelandic midfielder had assisted seven and scored one of Swansea’s 13 league goals to this point and scored another here with a wicked free kick from long range. Without the ball they stuck rigidly within that shape and dropped fairly deep, wary of Arsenal exploiting space in behind created by players pressing the ball individually rather than as a unit.

But it was when they had the ball that Monk had really done his homework. Arsenal picked Calum Chambers as a right full back and left him to it. Swansea picked Jefferson Montero on the left wing, a muscular winger who spent the whole afternoon running with speed and power directly at and usually straight past Chambers. The Ecuadorian reminded me of Andy Impey in his prime at QPR and he absolutely destroyed Chambers — Arsenal, typically, did nothing to help their young full back out, either by way of a tactical change or a covering winger.

This tactic did leave left back Neil Taylor exposed on the counter, with Montero regularly caught downfield, but the positives far outweighed the negatives and he was a key reason for the victory. Sensing they were onto something, they sent on Ghanaian Modou Barrow in the second half for Marvin Emnes, who’d started on the other wing, and he’s another quick, physical player. When giant striker Bafetimbi Gomis rose from the bench and headed in a second immediately from a cross from the left, it was clear what Monk’s strategy has been — adding pace, power and physicality to the quality approach work that Swansea have become famed for. There’s room for Little Tom Carroll at the heart of the midfield, and he looked much more at home in their style than he ever did at QPR last season, but Monk has mostly focused on adding height, power and speed to an already high quality football team.

Missing three of their four starting midfielders — Routledge, Dyer and Shelvey — they completely outplayed and outclassed Arsenal. A formidable opponent.

Links >>> Official Website >>> Swansea Oh Swansea Fanzine >>> Planet Swans site and forum >>> Vital Swansea site and forum >>> SCFC.co.uk

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Pablo_Hoopsta added 21:29 - Dec 1 Thanks for that but it sounds devastating, they're at home and will not be wanting to drop more points to relegationd fodder like us! Palace could have done us a favour there by lulling them into a false sense of security but ohh no... With nothing really to lose, let's hope we go at them.
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TacticalR added 22:00 - Dec 1 I am rather wary of the term 'ambition'. Briatore had it (Champions League football at the boutique). Fernandes and Beard have it. Even 'glad to be grey' Mark Hughes has it - it's why he left Fulham. Because we'd hammered Swansea a few times in the Championship we found it hard to take them seriously. Ah, happy days. When they hammered us at Loftus Road we had to wake up and look at what they'd been doing. I agree that Swansea have handled change much better than us, and much better than a lot of other clubs. They have also shown considerable flexibility in continuing to adapt their possession football philosophy to the top flight. To have actually won something when the big clubs are trying to hog everything is testament to that.

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