Only 24 hours after receiving an OBE at Windsor Castle for his services to football in Wales, Huw Jenkins returned to the day job and delivered the sort of news that a chairman with his track record of success rarely has to make.
Garry Monk knew what was coming, the conversation was brief and the only surprise was that Jenkins had taken so long to make an announcement that was inevitable at 4.50pm on Saturday.
Monk was on his way out when he headed down the tunnel after Leicester City’s crushing 3-0 victory at the Liberty Stadium. The defeat left Swansea City teetering one point above the relegation zone and with only one win from their past 11 league matches, yet it was the performance as much as the result that convinced Jenkins and the board that the time had come to cut Monk loose. Swansea looked like a team sleepwalking towards the Championship.
A prior appointment with royalty delayed Jenkins from a decision that he admitted was made “very reluctantly and with a heavy heart”. Jenkins knew that Monk, who joined Swansea in 2004 as a player, captained the club in all four divisions and embodied all the values and principles that characterised their fairytale rise, was much more than just another manager passing through the club. Monk lived and breathed Swansea City.
Appointed as Michael Laudrup’s replacement 22 months ago, Monk kept Swansea up in a caretaker role and was a spectacular success in his first full season in charge, as Swansea racked up a club-record Premier League points total and finished eighth – their highest place since promotion in 2011. This season also began brightly, with eight points from the first four matches, yet from September onwards everything unravelled spectacularly and in a way that highlights the size of the task that his replacement will take on.
The word inside the club is that Jenkins has already identified Monk’s successor and that it may well be a manager who is currently working overseas. Jenkins has been following Dennis Bergkamp’s coaching career closely for several years with a view to considering Ajax’s No2 at some stage while Gus Poyet, who is in charge of AEK Athens, was close to getting the Swansea job in the past. Other names, of course, could also be under consideration, although Brendan Rodgers is not believed to be among them.
On paper it is an attractive job – this is Swansea’s fifth season in the Premier League, the club is extremely well run off the field and their playing philosophy is deeply ingrained. Yet any prospective manager running his eyes over footage of Swansea’s matches since the start of September will see several key problems that need addressing, and may not have much to spend in the January transfer window to sort them out.
A toothless attack is the biggest issue. Wilfried Bony has not been adequately replaced since his £25m move to Manchester City in January and although Swansea coped well without the Ivorian during the second half of last season, the fact that they have failed to score in seven of their past 11 league games tells its own story.
Bafétimbi Gomis has been a passenger for the past three months and would have been dropped long before if Monk had a better back-up striker to turn to than Eder, a £5m summer signing from Sporting Braga. Gomis is not alone in struggling for form, albeit his listless displays up front make him stand out.
What has happened to Jefferson Montero since that exhilarating start to the season? Ki Sung-yueng is a shadow of the player who excelled last term and Jonjo Shelvey has also lost his way. Further back Ashley Williams and Federico Fernández are unrecognisable. Monk carries the can for the results but should he also take the blame for poor individual performances?
At the same time it was hard to argue with Jenkins when he said 24 hours before Monk’s dismissal that “something needs to change”. The man who had been chatting to Prince William moments before making that comment has a knack of getting these big calls right. Time will tell whether he has done it again.
