Transfer fees won’t influence decisions on team selection, insists boss Clement
SWANSEA City boss Paul Clement insists he will never allow transfer fees to determine team selection.
The head coach has faced criticism in some quarters for leaving the likes of Roque Mesa and Sam Clucas either on the bench or out of his matchday squad since their summer arrivals.
The Swans forked out £15m to land Clucas from Hull in a deal which could rise to become a clubrecord fee, while they paid £11m to secure Mesa from Las Palmas.
Wilfried Bony, the summer’s other major acquisition, has suffered with injury problems since his £12m arrival from Manchester City.
But Clement is adamant he cannot allow the outlay on players to influence his judgement when it comes to selection and rewarding those who perform best in training or on a matchday.
And he believes anyone could be a manager if it was as simple as picking the most expensive players in any squad.
When asked if he could empathise with frustrations over the lack of action for Mesa and Clucas, Clement said: “No, not really.
“When you come into these moments where you are not playing so well the crowd will call for Leon (Britton). Okay, he is a good player and he is in the team and then there are calls for Roque.
“If it was as simple as that, anybody could do what I do and be a manager.
“It is not simple, it is very complex with a lot of different dynamics going on and this is what me and my staff spend all our time thinking about. Coming up with the solutions and doing the planning.
“But if it was as easy as putting Leon in the team and everything will be alright... it does not work like that.
“He and Roque are good players, professionals who are doing their jobs and trying to be the best they can be.
“But I don’t pick a team based on the valuation of the player, whether a player is here on loan with us, whether a player is older or younger. I pick based on what I see of them in training and what is best for the game coming up.
“I don’t judge players based on how long they have been at the club. Whether they are new or old players.
“They are part of the squad and if they are fit and training well they are available.
“That could be the longest-serving player or the newest arrival. I don’t think of it like that.”
Clement went on to allude to the situation in other sports, such as basketball, where players get game time based on contract terms or draft picks and why such an approach would be ill-suited to football.
“There’s something I am going to share with you. There was a study done of players in the NBA (National Basketball Association),” he added.
“It was a study that looked at the statistic which had the biggest impact on how long a player spent on court.
“A lot of the common answers are the players who score the most points or have the most assists or rebounds.
“But when they looked down into it, the amount of time a coach gave a player was down to how high they had been picked in the draft.
“That’s a similar question you are asking me. Should I pick players based on how much the club paid for them? No.
“Clearly you don’t want to spend a lot of money on a player and not have him in the team. You have to look at the performance, short term, week to week and game to game.
“I am not looking at a figure, but that study on coaches shows how it can work in other sports where you pick player based on a selection process rather than what they bring to the court.”
Meanwhile, earlier this week Clement was linked with a reunion with Carlo Ancelotti after the Italian was touted for the managerial vacancy at Everton.
A report claimed Ancelotti – with whom Clement worked at Chelsea, PSG, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich – wanted his old number two to link up with him if he were to go to Goodison Park.
“It would not interest me at all,” said Clement.
“I really enjoy being here. This is a really good club, it is a massive challenge that I am enjoying and I have no plans to go anywhere.
“In terms of Carlo, I have not spoken to him in over a week so I don’t know anything about that situation.”
He added: “We are two wins away from people not being worried because we would be 10th or 11th in the table.
“It’s a sense of realism about what the situations is. It is very tight, the gap is absolutely nothing.
“There is no pressure from them (the owners). Ever since I have been here the chairman and the owners have been very supportive.
“They are actually very positive people as well and they feel everything is going to be OK.”