Swansea 'will be stronger' after transfer window

Alan Sheehan's Swansea finished 11th in the Championship in 2024-25 thanks to an impressive late-season run of form Director of football Richard Montague is confident Swansea City will have a stronger squad next season than they had in 2024-25, courtesy of the club's new-look recruitment set-up. The Championship side have agreed deals for four new recruits in the close season, with Ipswich Town defender Cameron Burgess the latest addition to Alan Sheehan's squad. The Swans have also brought in winger Zeidane Inoussa, striker Bobby Wales and defender Ricardo Santos, while Melker Widell will arrive in pre-season courtesy of a transfer agreed in January. Swansea have said farewell to Joe Allen, Kyle Naughton and Cyrus Christie, while loan signings Lewis O'Brien and Hannes Delcroix have departed and doubts remain over the future of out-of-contract defender Harry Darling. As a busy summer continues, Montague is upbeat about Swansea's work in his first window since arriving at the club in February. "We are having a lot of meetings, a lot of phone calls, a lot of discussion," he said. "At times, at this time of year, it can feel as if you are not really getting anywhere because players don't want to jump into things and sometimes clubs don't want to jump into things. "All I am very confident of is that we will finish the window stronger than when we went into it." Richard Montague (left) and Alan Sheehan (right) are part of the team involved in deciding Swansea's transfer policy Swansea have faced heavy criticism for their approach in a number of recent transfer windows. In February 2023, then boss Russell Martin saidSwansea's work in the transfer market needed to changeafter they failed to sign a player in the mid-season window. The following summer, Swansea added a raft of players to their squad – but the vast majority made little impact. In the summer of 2024, the Welsh club focused almost exclusively on young players with potential as Luke Williams missed out on more experience targets such as John Swift and Tyrese Campbell. And after another botched mid-season window,Williams echoed Martinby saying there "were a lot of things we need to do better". Though Williams has since left his role, the restructure he called for has come, with Montague working alongside head coach Sheehan, global head of analytics and recruitment Adam Worth and head of scouting James Morgan-Snowley. Montague, who previously worked at Notts County, has explained how all those figures are involved in the process to secure new signings. "Adam is responsible for identifying the players," Montague said. "He works very closely with James, our head of scouting, and they have a team of scouts and data analysts who work beneath them to work within the process to identify players. "At the end stage of that process, those players are brought to Alan and I am in on those meetings as well. That group, with Adam's leadership, determine which players we are going to go after. "Then it's my job to try to do the deals, speak to the players and sell them the project along with Alan."