With the near completion of Michael Duff’s rebuild of the Swansea City squad ( the amount of players in at the club means it is most certainly that ) there cannot be an immediate solution to the issues we saw on Saturday at the Hawthorns. How can there be ?

Hoping for an immediate magical sprinkle of Duff dust can’t surely happen ? Even with a big win in this league one Saturday marks you down as crashing the next. A immediate fix just can’t happen, football doesn’t do that in the vast majority of cases. It’s so up and down. The problem for me is the constant change behind the scenes. Losing Graham Potter, Steve Cooper and then Russell Martin is one issue, the other is the constant transition in the recruitment area of the club. There has also been little or no stability in the CEO, Chairman or whatever you want to call it ‘department’.

It’s been a revolving door of faces and promises.

No business can function successfully with constant change, reorganisation and general upheaval almost seasonally, and it never will. Even Michael Duff stated in his first interview he knows the club is a platform for managers to move on to better things, yes, that’s proven, but that didn’t sit well with me. Honest ? Perhaps, but not only is that an issue the Swans have to face up to it piles extra pressure on Duff himself.

If he does get the bullet for poor results he will be the first head coach of Swansea City to do so since the Premier League. That isn’t a side issue, it’s a human issue that Duff will have to manage on top of all the other pressures he will face. He has never been under such a microscope in all of his football career, we’ve been here before. The focus of the country is on a handful of football clubs, Wales primary sport - association football. More people play it, watch it and follow it than any other sport in the country, including rugby.

Duff might not realise this but hundreds of thousands of people now know who he is, far more than knew of him prior to his appointment at Swansea. Column inches are written every day in physical terms and they dwell upon every word he speaks and how he portrays himself. If he looks back further than the last three head coaches he will see Michael Laudrup, Roberto Martinez, Brendan Rodgers and Paulo Sousa in the same seat that he now occupies. In the same office, in the same environment. No other Welsh club has that pedigree, Duff currently sits on top of the most successful Welsh football club this century, and the expectation is huge. He has never experienced such exposure, and it’s evident in his press interviews to date it’s all a bit consuming.

And then he has a squad to manage and develop.

Duff has his team of allies and coaches around him, and to an extent he has had some investment from the club in to players that will make his life easier as the season progresses. However, it’s how he manages all that which is the ticking time bomb. How much his coaches are able to advise him and recognise when things are getting difficult. Basically seeing things coming that Duff doesn’t because he has thirty odd players and staff wanting pieces of him every day.

Some will disagree but those previous head coaches at the club have handled themselves exceptionally well. For me Russell Martin especially. He had a genuine honesty and gave far too much of himself in public to the extent where his weaknesses were exposed for all to see. I hope he has learned from that. Too many people used that display of weakness and vulnerability as an excuse to attack him on all fronts. A story for another day maybe …

But that said more about them than Russell Martin.

The challenges are there for a well paid Michael Duff that’s for sure, and most football fans couldn’t care less about his own personal welfare, private life or family. All they want is three points, and if pressed they will tell you they really don’t care about the affect the role he is employed to do has on him. For that reason alone, he deserves to be at a club that has produced so much talent and leadership over many years. Better to be a club like that than one that boasts nothing between its ears. And there are too many of them.

Yes, he has to get this right and it’s possible, and I use that word cautiously he may well do. That is if he can manage the role we see, as well as the one we don’t see, potentially more important than anything we see visibly on display. He is on a huge learning curve, and he could be the first Swans manager in many years to fall short, of course we all hope not.

His character will be tested during every waking hour as Swansea City head coach, and more than likely every second he sleeps, then eats, then thinks this football club. The prize is huge, and failure should not even be on his mind. But it will be, it s just how he manages those thoughts whilst trying to be the success he wants to be.

That’s the real test.

Photograph with permission Swansea City AFC

ReslovenSwan1 added 14:12 - Aug 14 An Aiden Flint type figure 6 ft 7 in and brave would have got his head to one of the three consecutive heading duels lost for WBA first long throw goal. Martin talked about bringing in a monster but that was not his way. Duff is going for another kid barely out of his teens from Chelsea. Ashley Williams was not tall but knew how to block and prevent headers.
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