Swansea City have been linked with Manchester City’s Tommy Doyle over the last few weeks, but now it seems Cardiff City have already inquired about him this weekend. The issue for any championship club will be his salary which for a twenty year old is in excess of ten thousand pounds a week.

Manchester City will have to weigh up where is best for Doyle to go with Cardiff currently in a bit of a relegation scrap four points away from the bottom three. They also have the worst home record in the whole football league. Their last league win was six games ago in November at Luton Town. Manager Steve Morison by all accounts has a certain way with him and has reportedly threatened his players that others will come in and replace them if they don’t sort their form out. Possibly Manchester City won’t want their young player in that environment, not only fighting for Cardiff’s championship future, but also under the guidance of a poorly performing new manager learning on the job.

Swansea City displayed some of the best football seen under Russell Martin yesterday against Huddersfield Town. The second half performance was so dominant it took save after save by Lee Nicholls, and a desperate rear guard action by the terriers to hang on for a point. After twenty plus games and a team being slowly moulded in Martin’s vision they completed over eight hundred passes, well over double compared to Huddersfield. From a footballing point of view Doyle would learn more and develop better in a footballing side as opposed to the current situation Cardiff find themselves in.

Tommy Doyle though has only seen seven games this season, most of them coming off the bench for Hamburg in tier two of the German league system. He wasn’t that inspiring when he did play and quickly fell out of love with the city and its club. He cut short his loan spell to reset back in Manchester. It’s clear he will go out on loan, and that will more than likely be in the championship. There will be numerous clubs wanting his signature but in the swans case do they really want to tie up a big wage on an untested youngster in the championship ? Especially when you look at his season to date in the second flight of the German leagues.

Swansea Independent view.
Too much money for a young player who hasn’t seen much game time this season. That’s if Manchester City want a full refund of his weekly wage. Even if they don’t Doyle is still a risk, but maybe one Martin thinks he can handle not dissimilar to his success with Jamie Paterson this season. If he goes elsewhere, so be it, Doyle possibly isn’t the top target this transfer window with attacking midfielder Matt O’Riley, defender Harry Darling at MK Dons and other targets desired within the Manchester City system.

Photographs licensed from Reuters

ReslovenSwan1 added 14:26 - Jan 16 Tommy Doyle is a set piece specialist. Free kicks and corners. This has been a weak spot for Swansea for some time. Sam Greenwood is a set piece specialist free kicks his speciality. Grimes seems to be improving but is no Gylfi Sigurdson or even Andy Robinson. Swansea until Huddersfield (A) have had trouble turning good possession stats into shots on target.
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