Swansea City Director and now shareholder Jake Silverstein is currently on another visit to west Wales and his enthusiasm for the current position of Swansea City is pretty obvious when in dialogue with him. Russell Martin will especially be happy to hear the overwhelming support he has from Silverstein and the American majority ownership.
That’s easy for any ownership to say, but Jake put over his reasoning for this exceptionally well in midweek after the Reading home victory. "This has been my fourth trip in twelve or fourteen months. Being a part of this club is terrific, every day I get to come down to Fairwood, I couldn’t be happier to be involved” Reviewing his future Jake sated he is committed to being in Swansea a lot, and involving his family in the Swansea journey. " I want my son to grow up feeling connected to Swansea and to understand the community. When he is older he will be able to form real memories he can take with him”
Silverstein has a number of interests within his sporting portfolio from the swans to DC United and now the Brisbane Bullets in Australia. Initially Silverstein was looking for a full ownership in another club in the championship, and wisely sought guidance from Steve Kaplan and Jason Levine. The upshot was they all saw their friendship and business acumen as something they could all put in the pot at Swansea, and the rest is history. Jake Silverstein is an extremely wealthy man let’s not beat around here, to accumulate wealth you need to be sensible in the future of how that works for you. He seems quite happy with a longview of his family involvement moving forwards, and the clubs debt is so minimal it no longer appears on the face of it a concern.
Swansea City fans should be exceptionally happy the direction these club figureheads are moving in.
Of course finance and how it impacts on football is crucial, and there was no way the ownership were going to throw millions and millions at the project. " We don’t want to chase our losses every year, that wasn’t something I was interested in doing. We try to make a measured and comprehensive investment plan to shore things up,mot ensure we invest in young talent. We need to ensure we have enough talent in the system for our player trading model to work, and Flynn Downes is a great example”
This is when the respect and enthusiasm for Russell Martin and his style of management really began to flourish between the two Swansea leaders started. Silverstein references this "Last year after we hired Russ, actually the first call I had with him he said there’s a player, Flynn Downes, here’s the profile we talked about through Julian and it played out exactly as we anticipated” That affirmation on Martin’s credentials and the fact Downes was very much a part of his bargaining to get to Swansea and proved to be a healthy and profitable start to the Martin / Silverstein relationship. Martin ensured a potential thirteen million pounds in profit could come Swansea City’s way in time.
The player trading model in action indeed.
On the swans manager, Jake was very clear on his abilities and management. "I couldn’t be prouder, Russell is exactly as advertised, a brilliant, amazing and thoughtful person. And I think he is a true football visionary, and I think he is a an exceptional leader and developer of these young men separate from football as human beings. I believed that from the moment I met him, I’ve seen it at play and I can tell you with my relationships with the players that have evolved over the last year and a half the growth I’ve seen in them as human beings is tremendous, I couldn’t be prouder. We are seeing that come through in the results. The love for and trust in one another and in Russell they have developed. I think the results will continue to follow”
That’s some confirmation on the mangers current standing within the club, it endorses what this website predominately believed from day one under Russell Martin, and any deviation from that due to poor results was nonsensical. You don’t strip a club back to the bare bones, employ good people in the rebuild and when the going gets a bit tough bin it all.
Swansea as a club are beginning to show small shoots of growth as a result. Russell Martin is displaying now what everyone wanted to see from day one, to even believe he could do that is also poor commentary on this club. We did say at the start of the season that he could lose six in a row and he wouldn’t get sacked, well now Jake Silverstein has spoken on the subject hopefully it now will begin to sink in no matter how hard it was to take at the time, us included. For us this has been an exciting and interesting time to see the development of not only the pathway Martin has led the club through but how he deals with adversity and how his training principles work. He wants his players to experience emotions such joy, hurt, dismay and then see how those emotions form a part of their learning. To not want to experience pain every week you learn through that emotional process, nobody wants pain in their lives when through hard work and experience you can prevent it.
And that’s why this was always going to click.
There will be further heartache but remember that’s what it’s all about, preventing hurt and experiencing joy as you climb out of the pain and replace it with hope and trust. That’s how this club is being guided, and it’s beginning to work. Surely today, the eve of the Welsh derby we as Swansea followers can be happy with that ?