Swansea City should bring back Brendan Rodgers after Gary Monk sacking
Swansea City have parted ways with Gary Monk, but what should be next for the Welsh Premier League side?
Swansea City were looking quite promising through the first four weeks of the 2015-16 Premier League season as they accrued eight points and sat fourth in the league table. In their 11 matches since, the Swans have managed just one win and six points, now sitting at 15th in the table and just one point clear of the relegation zone.
Subsequently, it’s no surprise that Swansea City Chairman, Huw Jenkins, handed down his decision to part ways with manager Gary Monk on Wednesday. Monk led the Swans to a club best eighth-place finish in the Premier League just last season, but his players indubitably have not given Monk the effort or performance necessary to replicate that level of performance this season over their last 11 league matches.
Now Jenkins and the club are in a search for Monk’s successor, trying to keep Swansea free of relegation and trying to get the likes of Andre Ayew, Jefferson Montero, and Bafetimbi Gomis back in form.
One name that was being tossed around as a possible target for Swansea as the rumblings of Monk’s potential sacking began earlier this week is former Everton and Manchester United skipper David Moyes. However, considering Moyes hasn’t lasted a year at his last two posts with United and most recently La Liga’s Real Sociedad, there’s a much more favorable and sensible candidate to head the Welsh side available for hire: Brendan Rodgers.
Rodgers was sacked by Liverpool on Oct. 4 of this season after having the highly priced, highly talented side at just 10th in the table through eight games. That being said, Rodgers’ candidacy for that Liverpool job when he took it in 2012 was brought about by his success with Swansea City in the two previous years.
Rodgers took the reigns of the Welsh club in July 2010 when Swansea were still in the Football League Championship, England’s second tier. Rodgers earned the side a promotion to the Premier League in just his first season, though, bringing the Swans the honor of being the first Welsh team to compete at England’s highest level since the EPL’s formation in 1992.
In Swansea’s first Premier League season (the 2011-12 campaign), Rodgers led the side to an 11th-place finish in the table, avoiding relegation and establishing the Swans as a club on the rise. Unfortunately, Rodgers left that summer to take the post at Liverpool.
Despite his departure, Rodgers has an established success record with a Swansea club that’s low on funds in comparison to many other clubs in the league and could be the man capable of making a splash big enough to rejuvenate the Swans and keep them up in the Premier League.
The fit seems, frankly, almost too perfect. Rodgers is in need of work after his firing two months ago and he’s a manager with ties to this club that needs an answer and quickly. That being said, a Rodgers’ hire wouldn’t come without some apprehension.
The worry with a Rodgers hiring would be that the 42-year-old Northern Irish manager would again use the Swans as a jump-off point to again try to get to managing a bigger club. As Swansea City look to avoid relegation, though, that’s a risk that they should be more than willing to take at this point.
Whether or not hiring Rodgers is the direction that Jenkins and the higher-ups at Swansea decide to go obviously remains to be seen. With the options that are out there and with the current state of affairs, however, there’s no candidate for the now vacant position that has ties to the club, a proven record of success in the situation that the Swans are currently in, and that is a big enough name to provide the spark that the Welsh club needs.