Darren O’Dea leads the Swans into a Championship fixture at Bristol City tomorrow (12:30pm) with all of his players returning by the end of today. We are yet to hear any form of news from Darren on the state of play as we move into this fixture, so info is scarce.

The club continue to have dialogue with President Carlos Gomes at CS Maritímo over the release of Vítor Matos and that continues today, and if necessarily over this weekend. The Swans are in no desperate hurry to appoint Matos or indeed any new head coach replacement for Alan Sheehan. The preference was to get HammarbyIF manager Kim Hellberg into the club last weekend. That didn’t happen and we understand Hellberg will be announced later today as new Middlesbrough head coach or at least confirmed within a very short timeframe.

What the discussions are covering with Gomes is the termination agreement of Vitor Matos contract in Madeira which isn’t the much spoken about release clause. It’s a total pay off of everything to get Matos to Swansea with whoever he wants to accompany him. There is no withdrawal by the Swans, or by Matos himself and discussions continue. If these continue to a natural conclusion and the appointment of Matos we are sure the club will clarify all questions at some point. Nothing has changed as of today.

The Swans play tomorrow and Maritimo have a game on Sunday. Discussions are very fluid at this moment in time. The main concerns for O’Dea with the Robins game almost upon him is the fitness of those returning to the Swansea fold today, some came back yesterday. The assessments on those players take time, as we have explained before the primary goal is to identify any injuries that they have picked up first. Any injury comes with compensation claims in to the relevant country. So no training before that is done.

The other issue is the loss of players suspended for this game. Josh Tymon (above) and Ben Cabango are out. If fit we expect Cameron Burgess to captain the side, but of course O’Dea is an unknown entity when it comes to decision making. This is now his gig, his first chance to display his mindset and strategy as the man at the forefront of operations this weekend. There is little appetite for the Swans to turn to another interim manager as we saw with Sheehan - and there is absolutely no appetite the Swans to employ Russell Martin as seems still to be the rumours as of today.

Remember this from last Monday ?

No move for Martin

All this and the Swans still haven't exhausted their managerial candidate list.

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Photographs : CS Maritimo and Swansea City AFC