*Career Mode content has been moved to another platform here*

The Club

Founded in 1912, Swansea City AFC play their football at the Swansea.com Stadium. The ground has a total capacity of 21,088 and is located in the South of Wales, 43 miles from rivals Cardiff City. The Swans are majority owned by an investor group but are also partly owned by the Swansea City Supporters Trust. The club has a charitable foundation which has an awesome mission that I really admire. If you'd like to support the Swansea City Foundation you can find them here.

The Manager

I chose Chris Coleman to be the Manager of Swansea as I was fond of his management at Fulham when they were in the Premier League. He managed on a tight budget, got the best out of his players and had those boys playing some attractive attacking football. Coleman was actually born in Swansea and played for the club too. But after gaining a lot of experience and even managing the national team, the Welshman has never managed his hometown club. Until now! I'd like to think I modelled Chris OK but if anyone knows how to make a more realistic model in FCM please let me know.

A Star Striker

Why did I decide to start a Swansea career you wonder? I don't have any connection to the club. It's no secret that Arsenal is where my heart lies, but there Isn't much of an exciting challenge there considering the level that Arsenal is at. I took on this virtual sporting project with The Swans based on some random inspiration. I watched a live broadcast of an international match and witnessed a moment of incredible quality from Michael Obafemi.  

It wasn't just the spectacular goal he scored either. The all-round game was impressive. Michael even assisted a goal for his team mate. I'd never heard of the guy before so I was excited to see such an awesome performance from a player unknown to me. I decided to look him up and realised he was a young man at the beginning of his career.

Obafemi came up at Southampton, but didn't manage to force his way into their plans. 2021/2022 was his first full season and the young forward found himself playing for Swansea. The South Wales shooter bagged 12 goals in 20 starts, so it looks like the Championship is the perfect playground for Obafemi to play regular games and build his confidence. 22 years old with a decent debut season. The future looks bright for Lil Mike. I liked the idea of turning the young Irishman into a star striker and getting Swansea promoted to the Premier League. 

Directives

The board gave me the task of challenging for promotion. This had a huge impact on my transfer policy. I needed players capable of winning the Championship who could also make the step up to the Premiership. For that reason I targeted young players (<25 yo) with plenty of room for growth. I had to move on our elder statesmen to accommodate the board’s request.

Another target set by the governors was to sign 3 players aged under 20. This set the precedent for a clear focus on youth development. Unfortunately Swansea wasn’t blessed with the biggest budget so I couldn’t sign the best players available. I had to hunt for bargains and fortunately I found some.

Swansea City Transfer Policy

In the short term I needed to bring in young players who could fulfil the objectives and also develop to a Premier League standard. I looked for players around the 70 OVR mark and set an age cap of 25. I want British players in my Swansea team, but I particularly want Welsh players. I always feel like It’s a more realistic simulation to sign players from the local talent pool. But I’m not dismissing talent from further afield. We don't intend to discriminate, but we do want to preserve the identity of the club. I’ll look for players with the following priority:

1. Welsh nationality
2. British nationality
3. Other

Shortlist

Now that I've outlined the Transfer Policy, I can discuss the shortlist. I'm only planning this at a high level as players will need to be signed to fit the needs of the team. Transfer budget, wages and board directives will all be constraints. Youth Academy players, regens and free transfers may all be better signings. There may also be other opportunities I cannot foresee that make sense to take advantage of. I will have to assess the options available and choose the best ones during each Transfer Window. There are no guarantees that I will sign the players on this list, but here are some players that I'm monitoring:

• Sorba Thomas
• Rabbi Matondo
• Ethan Ampadu
• David Brooks
• Neco Williams
• Harry Wilson
• Daniel James
• Brennan Johnson
• Connor Roberts
• Rhys Norrington-Davies
• Rubin Colwill
• Tyler Roberts

Tactics

Initially I planned to play possession based attacking football with 2 strikers. From the very first game I found out that The Championship is a tough league for me playing on World Class difficulty. The current Swansea team would struggle with such an attacking system, which relies upon intricate play.

Before I could experiment any further my plans had to be altered. One of my strikers picked up an injury. Now that I had been forced to play with one striker, I decided to set the team up to be more defensive, utilise direct runs, long passes and play on the counter attack.

The team didn't have the technical level required for the possession based game I initially intended. I had to adapt and craft a style that better suited the players. They struggled with their first touch and with passing accuracy. I found that a game with less passing and touches, that uses pace to exploit space on the flanks was much more effective instead.

The Squad

Swansea start 2021/2022 with a few decent players and quite a big squad. A number of players were under the age of 25 and fit perfectly into my plans for the future. But of course a number of other players did not fit my vision at all and needed to be moved on.

There were plenty of players on loan, which meant I had to wait a season before I could make plans for them (unless I was prepared to pay a penalty to recall them from the loan, which I did for Cullen when Piroe got injured).

On top of having players out on loan, Swansea had a few players in on loan too. Wolf turned out to be a quality player at Championship level so I was grateful to have inherited the Austrian on loan from the Bundesliga.

New Signings

You may have noticed there's a few new signings in the squad image above. That's because I managed to sign five players who could improve the team immediately and another two who could improve the bench.

My RB (Christie) started the season injured. He's one of the players that were brought in on loan before I took over the club. I looked for a player who could cover Christie in the short term and be a backup CB (Wiśniewski). I previously mentioned that Wolf was a pre-arranged loan too. I wanted a player who could grow into Wolf's role for next season, but play as an impact sub in the short term (Petrila).

I'm quite happy with the business considering the budget and the need to avoid players on high wages. All of the signings were consistent with the transfer policy and long term goals of the club. Reports on all the signings will be added and will open in separate articles when you click the links below:

• Thomas
• Ferguson
• Dasilva
• Greaves
• Wiśniewski
• Petrila
• Ebosele

Youth Development

It made sense to hire a youth scout given the current mandate from the board. So I chose to hire the best scout money could buy. Andrus Made cost me around £4 million. But his 5* Judgement and 5* experience has been priceless. I also hired a cheap 1* scout to compare the quality of players found. After one round of scouting each, it became clear that a 5* scout was well worth the investment. 

I project that I should be able to get a return on my initial scouting investment in about 5 years. During this time the players will be trained and expected to improve, therefore increasing their transfer value. Once promoted to the first team opportunities to play will be limited so players will be listed for loan. This is expected to increase transfer value also. 

It is entirely possible that some players may see a rapid growth spurt and can be sold when they have somewhat matured and appreciated in value quickly. Although it would not be wise to sell a promising academy product unless we have another similar player ready to replace him.

I do not expect that all of the youth players will fit my style of play. I also do not expect that all of the youth players will rise to the level required to play for Swansea within a reasonable time horizon. There will be a continuous scouting operation deployed. Throughout the season and during the summer break too. For these reasons I expect to sell the vast majority of academy graduates and only see a few of them progress into the first team.

In short, my youth development strategy is to develop youth until they can command a reasonable fee, or until I can find a place for them in the first team squad.

The first fiscal goal is to receive enough compensation from sales to reimburse the initial investment (£4 million). The second fiscal goal is to provide the club with a return on the initial investment. Youth Academy sales will be tracked and once ROI is achieved, funds will be re-invested into another 5 * scout. The footballing goal is simply to produce quality players.

Academy Players

Zimmerman was a player I found in the Swansea academy right from the start. A 6'2 Swiss CAM with 5* skills, a low overall rating, but bags of potential. He is the only original Swansea youth I've held onto.

The first location I sent my scout to was England. Like Zimmerman, The first cohort of Andrus Made recruits turned out to have low OVR ratings and no chance of making the step up into the first team any time soon. However, there was a small selection of players who maintained a high POT rating and have a chance of playing for Swansea in the future.

Peter Kelly is by far the most promising of all the prospects. He's 6'6 with a solid weight; plays a number of positions by default; has the highest POT of the cohort; a decent level of skill and weaker foot mastery; reasonable defensive work-rates; is blessed with pace and has an impressive physical prowess too. I'm expecting this guy to look and feel like an absolute unit in-game. He could be really effective in the CDM and CB positions. Looking forward to seeing my #1 prospect play for the first team one day.

Season Review

When the summer transfer window closed Swansea had £95k left in the transfer budget and £3k left in wages. We made 7 signings with an average rating of 68.85 and an average age of 21. I'd like to think the funds were used wisely. We didn't need the January window as all the business for the season was already planned and executed in the Summer.

You may have already noticed that all the objectives on the directives image were marked as completed. The board considered the club to be above the targets they set and the Manager rating was 94. We finished top of the league by almost 20 points and were able to sim a lot of the matches towards the end because of this.

Obafemi scored a ridiculous amount of goals and fired Swansea to the league title. The two signings brought in to replace the pre-arranged loan players made excellent progress. Wiśniewski did so well I could terminate Christie's loan and employ Wissy as our first choice RB. Petrila turned out to be an excellent impact sub who often registered goal contributions helping the team to win. 

Business End of the Season

It’s guaranteed that I’ll be incorporating the FA’s official scouting techniques as well as all the other ideas I’ve picked up over the years. If you like what I’m doing with FCM Scout feel free to contact me on Twitter and to get involved on the Twitch streams too.

I’d welcome the chance to scout professionally. So I’m open to offering my services to any Football organisation, including Football Clubs, Football Agencies and Media or Broadcasting companies. Please email me to discuss any business enquires. OK enough of the introductions. Let’s do some scouting!