Clement’s time:The inside and how his stint with the

Paul Clement often outlined to the media just how aware he was of the brutalities of football management.

Stints as an assistant at the likes of Chelsea, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich had highlighted just how cut-throat the modern game can be, as had a spell at Derby where he was unceremoniously ditched despite the club being in the Championship play-off places.

Yet when he joined his players for a lap of appreciation after helping the Swans pull off a dramatic escape from relegation, even he surely could not have foreseen how quickly the wheel would turn for him.

Seven months later and the 45-year-old finds himself out of work and looking for a new opportunity.

It was an ignominious end to a tenure that looked to promise so much, but ultimately fell short.

Regardless of how it all ended, Clement deserves to be remembered with some gratitude in these parts.

Swansea were sleepwalking towards the Championship before his January appointment. Of course, the players more than played their part, but it was those same players who had floundered under Bob Bradley.

They were almost transformed under Clement.

The decision to jettison club legend Alan Curtis from the first-team coaching staff proved unpopular and did little for Clement in the court of public opinion as he stepped into the hot-seat.

Yet the reaction and improvement Clement oversaw meant Swansea enjoyed their best half-season spell in the Premier League.

From the turn of the year to the end of 2016-17, they were the eighthbest side in the top flight.

They were not necessarily a pretty team to watch but they were efficient and effective, with Gylfi Sigurdsson and Fernando Llorente providing the cutting edge.

Once safety was secured, the summer was always likely to be key in ensuring there was no repeat of relegation troubles.

Instead it was a period that left Clement with more questions than answers.

The protracted saga over the sale of Sigurdsson to Everton stymied Swansea’s efforts, while Llorente was a deadline-day departure to Tottenham.

The likes of Roque Mesa, Sam Clucas, Renato Sanches and Wilfried Bony came through the door, but the belated nature of many arrivals – Clucas, Sanches and Bony signed in the final knockings of the window – left Clement playing catch-up.

It quickly became clear that Swansea’s summer business was not working out as Bony suffered with injuries, while Sanches and Clucas struggled for form and Mesa took time to adapt to his new surroundings.

There were eight central midfielders in his squad but just one specialist left-back. With Bony injured he was left to rely on a 20-year-old Premier League rookie in Tammy Abraham for goals.

It was here that Clement began to run into difficulties.

There had always been a view among supporters of a negativity in his approach. Pragmatism was probably a fairer word for it, but some dissatisfaction was there to be heard when his decision to bring on a defender late on in the goalless draw at Southampton was met by boos from the away end.

With goals hard to come by those frustrations only grew; add in a tangible uncertainty over his best formation and line-up and matters soon got worse.

It should be said that these were not all issues of his own making.

Few supporters doubted Clement was working with an inherently weak squad and it was one of the reasons why club chiefs had hoped to give him the January window to strengthen.

But there was also a feeling that the squad was still capable of being better than it was producing when it mattered most, even though players and staff talked in glowing terms, publicly and privately, of his abilities and methods as a coach.

Some staff went as far as to compare him to Brendan Rodgers. A warm tribute indeed.

However, as defeats began to pile up, Clement often seemed to second-guess himself, occasionally responding to outside influence rather than trusting his instincts.

His decision to field five at the back against Watford backfired spectacularly, leading to an apology to supporters.

Wingers were tried, ditched and brought back again.

The midfield diamond, used to such effect during the final run-in last term, was used sparingly.

Having laid solid foundations, Clement was having trouble building the rest of the house.

The lack of attacking spark – Swansea at times appeared to be a team playing by numbers – fed into disquiet and anxiety among supporters at the Liberty, where the club’s record has been wretched this term.

On the rare occasions when Swansea did pick up a result, they could not build on it; the only consistency they could muster was in the regularity of defeats.

Inevitably, in such circumstances the spotlight began to turn on Clement.

He regularly insisted he was the man to turn it around, but his reaction and body language when deal-