England youth international Finley Burns is believed to be part way through signing a loan deal with Swansea City this weekend. The defender who joined Manchester City for around £175,000 from Southend in 2017, at the age of thirteen is highly rated by his parent club.

Burns commented after his only Manchester City appearance this season against Wycombe “It was a battle that I've never experienced. I'm used to people my own age and a similar build so coming up against someone like Akinfenwa who is double the size of me and bullying me a bit ... it was a great experience and definitely something I've learnt from. "I just need to take what I learned from that game into future games. There were a few times at the start where I thought I was going to try to win the ball but sometimes you've just got to let him bring it down and accept I wasn't going to win the physicality. It's a bit nerve-wracking playing in front of 30,000 for the first time but after your first pass gets away you're settled in and you put yourself in a position where you feel like you've got more control in the situation where in training sometimes the players you're playing against can pull anything out of the bag and you've got to be prepared to try to stop them any way you can. No disrespect to Wycombe, but the quality is the reason why they're the best players in the world and they're playing at Man City”

It just seems odd to us that a player so young with no real first team professional experience bar one appearance in the EFL Cup for his club against Wycombe would be favoured by the swans. The system Russell Martin works to has been shored up in recent times. The swans have Ryan Bennett, Ben Cabango and Brandon Cooper as centre backs if that is the right terminology in this Swansea system. There is also flexibility for Ryan Manning, Cyrus Christie, Joel Latibeaudiere, Kyle Naughton and even Flynn Downes to utilise their defensive qualities across the back. The type of player Martin desires are flexible, able to fit in to the system, and will always know their roles regardless of
playing time.

This is what seems so baffling, if Finley Burns was a necessity it would be seen as a good move, but he doesn’t seem to be. The fact he will never sign for the swans permanently tells us it is more favourable to Manchester City than Swansea that this loan goes ahead. They may well be happy to see Finley in a match day squad in the championship, learning how things work and experiencing a new training and learning environment. When Russell Martin made this comment about the centre back role earlier in the season “in a position of such responsibility, you want someone to be there all the time and the more they live the moments, the better the team becomes because it is such an important position for us. We have a few guys available now who can play there. We'll look at it moving forward to see who's going to be the guy more often than not” We expected a little bit more possibly than an eighteen year old inexperienced centre back from Manchester City.

It doesn’t add up that with Brandon Cooper a more than capable asset already at the club that this move for Finley is seen as a good one. Other than to keep Manchester City happy for future business ? With this latest loan coming in it seems Brandon Cooper who has been praised so much by Russell Martin will head out on loan. At one point it was only the high performing levels of the defenders at the club that was keeping Cooper out. Unless of course someone has come in for Ryan Bennett which is highly unlikely with his salary so high.

How this one will play out is anyone’s guess, there was always going to be a Manchester City loanee coming in, I think most of us knew that but in this important position we just didn’t expect it to be, with all due respects, Finley Burns. We obviously welcome him to the club and want him to do well. The problem is if he doesn’t then the likes of Brandon Cooper must be wondering why they are still out of favour, out on loan when really they should be at Swansea City.

Finley Burns is a big lad who has had to work on his football skills and abilities very hard since he joined Manchester City. It didn’t come easy for him, and maybe the swans see something in him the club hasn’t got at the moment. We hope so as Burns becomes the first of at least two players to come in over the next few days.

More transfer news as we get it.

Photographs licensed from Reuters

Swansea City Polls