Apart from the obvious World Cup exclusions Swansea City have landed at Edinburgh airport for the start of their training camp. They will play a couple of behind closed doors training games over the time they are in the north. Those games are against Hearts and Glasgow Rangers.
The swans will stay at the Scottish national performance centre within Heriot Watt university in Edinburgh, a world renowned training facility. Hearts also train there as do numerous other club sides and the Scotland rugby sides. The hotel within the complex offers over one hundred and fifty rooms, indoor and outdoor pitches, squad courts, pools, hydrotherapy areas and much more. The swans won’t get bored that’s for sure.
Speaking about this golden opportunity to get the squad focussed for the next championship game against Norwich City on December 10th manager Russell Martin said. "It came about because we needed games during that period. We can't not have any games going into Norwich. We'll focus more on the physical side more than anything else. Then we need a couple of weeks on the training pitch and working on things before we go into the next block of games. Within that, we needed some games. We don't want to play another Championship team because it's counter productive, playing against someone you're going to play against, why would you give them a chance to play against you and work out some stuff? Premier League teams don't go back until two-and-a-half weeks after us so none of them want games until the week after when we're playing our first league game. So the only other option was to try and go abroad or we can use the contacts we've got up the road, me personally and Andy Goldie can sort out some games that way, so we have, and we're really pleased with the quality of games we've got. Hearts are great, they're playing us before they go away and then Rangers are coming back and playing us, so it'll be two really good tests for us. We'll get everyone some minutes. It's going to be freezing, we can't afford warm weather training! It'll really serve a purpose and get everyone together again."
We will of course keep you updated with all the latest news from the training camp over the next eight days.