Alan Curtis was merely saying what plenty of people had been thinking on Saturday evening as the lights went out at the Liberty Stadium in the wake of yet another defeat and news filtered through that Paul Clement had agreed to become Swansea City’s new manager. “He had the security of a top job at Bayern Munich but he wanted the challenge,” Curtis, Swansea’s first-team coach, said after the win at Crystal Palace on Tuesday night. “I told him if I was him I would have stayed in Germany.”
Working alongside Carlo Ancelotti at Bayern Munich, enjoying the view from the top of the Bundesliga during the winter break and looking forward to a Champions League tie against Arsenal next month sounds like a reasonable gig and, on the face of it, a lot more appealing than taking over at Swansea, who had just sacked their second manager in the space of 85 days and were anchored to the foot of the Premier League table.
Yet Clement was never going to be satisfied with spending the rest of his career as a No2, no matter how much respect he has for Ancelotti, who has become a good friend as well as a mentor. The tall, imposing figure who was striding along the touchline at Crystal Palace – “like a boxer about to walk into the ring” observed one of his former Chelsea colleagues the following morning – is intent on making his mark as a manager, with his harsh dismissal at Derby County last season, after eight months in charge, doing nothing to alter that view.
Derby were fifth at the time, five points off an automatic promotion place, when Clement was sacked following a run of seven matches without victory and few people within the club shared the view of Mel Morris, the owner, that it was the right decision.
Morris said at the time that Derby had not made enough progress under Clement. An alternative take would be that Morris was interfering rather than letting Clement get on with a job that could still have ended in promotion. Either way, the record books show that Derby went on to finish exactly where they were when Clement departed and now sit seventh in the Championship.
It is hard to read anything definitive into Clement’s only previous experience as a manager, which is why in some respects his appointment at Swansea also represents a leap of faith on the part of the Premier League club, not just the man who has signed a two-and-a-half-year contract to replace Bob Bradley.
At the same time, it is easy to see why Swansea’s board have always been impressed by Clement whenever their paths have crossed. The former PE teacher has worked for some of Europe’s biggest clubs, including Chelsea, Paris Saint-Germain, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich, and has a reputation as an excellent coach, which fits with Swansea’s long-held view that the person picking the team should also be taking training in the week.
Those who have worked with Clement talk about his meticulous attention to detail – the dossiers compiled on Derby’s opponents brought a new meaning to the word thorough – as well as the way he diligently goes about his job, placing great emphasis on being organised on and off the pitch.
A quiet man with a big presence, Clement talks in considered but authoritative tones – everybody was impressed by the way he spoke at Swansea’s training ground on Wednesday before taking his first session – and it is evident that he has learned from Ancelotti that patience is one of the most important qualities for any coach to possess.
There is a story at Chelsea about how one day Clement was furious with José Bosingwa, the Portuguese right-back, and ready to take him to task only for Ancelotti to put a hand on his assistant’s shoulder, urge him to remain calm and keep his counsel. Counting to five has long been one of Ancelotti’s ways of dealing with problems that could easily escalate.
Although Clement has talked about sharing the same footballing philosophy as Swansea, he is also a pragmatist. Perhaps one of the most relevant aspects of Clement’s work at Derby, in the context of the situation he has walked into at Swansea, is the way he made the team hard to beat for a period. Derby kept 12 clean sheets during a 19-game spell when they lost once and climbed to the top of the Championship table.
Whether he can do something similar in the Premier League is a different matter and down to not just the standard of the opposition and the quality of his coaching, but also the ability of players he has inherited. Defensively, Swansea have been awful this season, conceding 44 goals in the 19 Premier League games before Clement’s arrival, and although there were some positive signs in the 2-1 win against Palace, when the new head coach quickly made his presence felt, it still feels as though a commanding centre-back is a priority in this transfer window.
At least three or four new faces are needed to reinvigorate a squad that has been allowed to stagnate and it will be intriguing to see whether Clement receives any help from that distinguished list of former clubs, perhaps in the form of loan deals for out-of-favour players, and the extent to which he is backed by Swansea’s American owners to put his own stamp on the team.
As much as the win at Palace has revived hope that Swansea can still escape the drop, Clement could not have picked a more daunting run of games to start with. In four of their next six Premier League fixtures Swansea host Arsenal and travel to Liverpool, Manchester City and Chelsea, rendering the other two matches, against Southampton and Leicester at home, must‑win. Come through that lot out of the relegation zone and even Curtis may start to think that Clement was right to swap Munich for the Mumbles.
