Here are your Swansea City headlines for Thursday, March 24.
Swans linked with striker
Swansea City are among a number of clubs said to be chasing Salford City striker Brandon Thomas-Asante this summer. The 23-year-old forward has scored nine goals in 29 appearances for the League Two outfit and Football League World claim the Swans, as well as Reading, Cardiff City, Wigan Athletic, Portsmouth, Ipswich and MK Dons, are monitoring the forward.
The Swans will likely be looking for more striking options this summer as Russell Martin looks to really rubber-stamp his style of play and mould the squad into his vision moving into next season.
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With Joel Piroe and Jamie Paterson undertaking so much of the heavy lifting on the goalscoring front, Martin will doubtless want to bolster his options and ease the burden on the aforementioned duo next term. Whether Thomas-Asante is the man to do that, though, remains to be seen.
He is the second striker to be linked with Swansea in recent days - Brentford's Nathan Young-Coombes is also said to be on Martin's radar. For the latest transfer news from the Swansea.com Stadium, sign up to our Swans newsletter.
Oviedo legend raves about Baston
Former Swansea City forward Borja Baston is tearing it up in Spain's second tier with Real Oviedo.
Baston, who was viewed as a transfer flop in SA1, left the Swans in 2020 when he sealed a shock move to Aston Villa, before returning to Spain with Leganes. He eventually joined Oviedo last year and is having a tremendous season in front of goal.
Oviedo has been decimated by financial strife in the not-so-distant past, plummeting from the top tier right to the very bottom, struggling to regain its status of old. The club finally reached the Segunda Division again in 2015 and since then, Jose Verdu Nicolas, better known as Toche, holds the record for scoring the most goals in the season with 17.
However, Baston equalled that with a goal against Lugo last Saturday, meaning he is almost certain to bypass Toche's record this term. The Oviedo legend, though, is happy that his record will be lost to a friend.
"I'm glad that Borja Baston is the person who matches my figure of 17 goals," Toche told Killer Asturias. "He's a friend and his goals are helping the team fight for the play-offs. I think he's having a good year and hopefully his numbers serve for Oviedo to get into promotion promotion positions, which is what we all want . In the end, what a player needs is to feel important and that is what he has here."
Starlet motivated by long-term goal
Swansea City's Azeem Abdulai has revealed his motivation to play at the Swansea.com Stadium has been heightened by playing at Championship stadiums in recent weeks.
The Swans' under-23s have played at the first-team's ground as well as Barnsley's Oakwell Stadium, where the game ended in a goalless draw on Tuesday, in recent weeks and the 19-year-old said that has only whet the appetite to fulfil his goal of playing regularly for the first team.
“Getting the opportunity to play at Oakwell and the Swansea.com Stadium is what prepares you for what first-team football is like," he said. "The pitch is bigger and there is a bit of an atmosphere in the stadium, you can’t get better than that.
“There’s more space and I think, with the way that we play at Swansea, that’s something that really benefits us. We break down teams, tire them out and even more space opens up. Obviously long term I want to be playing at the Swansea.com Stadium regularly, but for the next game I’m just hoping we can go and put on a show again. We’ve not won too many this season even though the performances have been there, I think we will be looking for a good end to the season with three games left and we’ll be aiming to win them all.”
The midfielder, who previously played for Celtic and Leicester, has been included in a number of Russell Martin's matchday squads of late and will undoubtedly hope he gets some senior minutes under his belt before the season ends.
