Joel Piroe was the big name to leave SA1 during the summer transfer window, with the striker moving to Leeds United a week before the transfer market closed after a summer of speculation.
Leeds are just one of a number of clubs linked with the striker over the summer. Everton, Nottingham Forest, Atalanta and Southampton all reported interested parties, but it was Leeds who made a concrete offer and eventually took him to Yorkshire, where Piroe scored on his debut for them.
The Swans did what they could to secure a contract extension for Piroe, but Andy Watson revealed on Saturday that the demands of the player and his agent were not something the club were ready for. response and because of this, a sa
Piroe scored more than 40 goals for the Swans in two years in South West Wales, which always attracts interest from elsewhere and with the Dutchman in the final year of his contract, it is reported in the press that You will be allowed to terminate the contract. is unfounded and will probably never be the case given the way the club operates financially.
“I spoke a lot to Joel,” Watson said in an interview with the Swans’ official website. “I talked to a lot of players. I said I would do two things: I would be fair and I would be honest.
“Ultimately, we want to try to keep Joël, but what he wants and what his agent wants is not within the structure of the football club.
“We felt like we couldn’t break that structure because of the consequences. This is linked to an offer that has been received. We conducted an internal review that was met and exceeded in certain cases. “When you get a return on investment, he indicates that he won’t sign a new contract and you can’t compete with a club that has parachute payments, it all gets to the point where you say We What should I do, we bring the best to the football club.
“We can get something that we can then reinvest and strengthen over time. »
After some very poor decisions regarding player contracts over the last five or six years, it is refreshing to know that we won’t necessarily have to comply, even given the nature of a football club. Stone sometimes requires a certain level of requirements in terms of requirements. compete with ambition, but with the arrival of 13 new players during the transfer window, it would be a pretty strong accusation to blame the current structure that we have not sought to do everything possible. possible during the transition period.
As it stands, a fee of £12m for Piroe with less than a year left on his contract is a far preferable deal than letting him run out of contract and leaving with nothing or bankruptcy (or at least (especially stretching too far) to get a new contract signed. So this is probably the right decision for the reasons Watson outlined.
