Garry Monk is hoping to take Swansea City central defender Kyle Bartley on a season-long loan. The 25 year-old will be out of contract in 12 months time, so if this deal goes through it will presumably be with a view to a permanent transfer in the summer of 2017.

Bartley began his career at Arsenal, but failed to break through into their first team, and instead went out for loan spells at Sheffield United and Rangers. He moved onto Swansea for around £1m in August 2012, but again went out on loan, this time to Birmingham City. Yet Gary Monk must have seen something that his other managers didn’t, as he recalled Bartley to Swansea and offered him a new three year contract.

But once again he now finds himself surplus to requirements at Swansea under Monk’s successor, yet you would have thought that Monk would know a good central defender when he sees one, having played in that position himself in his younger days. Although Bartley has never really established himself at the top level, we’ll have to hope he can do a job in the Championship.

We all know that central defence is an area where we need to strengthen. Sol Bamba is becoming increasingly error-prone and lack pace, while Bellusci has been a complete liability ever since he came to Leeds. For some reason a string of Italian clubs have been reported as being interested in Bellusci, and all I can say is good luck to them!

Players of Bartley’s calibre are probably the best we can hope to sign on our present circumstances, so let’s hope Garry Monk is able to do the deal with his former club.

In other news, the club’s official site is reporting that promising 20-year-old left-back Tyler Denton has agreed to an extension of his contract. That’ll come in handy if we should ever decide to cash in on Charlie Taylor and sell him to someone in the Premier League.

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