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Swansea City and Wales legend Leighton James legend is distraught at the club's plight at the foot of the Premier League and offers a no holds barred assessment of where things have gone wrong...

You may, or may not agree with the words of this column every week, but one thing I will never be accused of is being spineless.

Which is exactly what I personally accuse the Swansea City team of, judging by what I witnessed against Southampton at the Liberty on Tuesday night,

Where was the passion, desire, the on-field leadership required to drag this team away from the relegation positions?

In fact, where has it been for the past few weeks? Have you seen it, because I haven't.

Whatever happens in Sunday's finale against Stoke, whether the Swans are still in the Premier League or down in the Championship, it is time for some at the club to take a hard look at themselves.

Accept the errors of their ways, heed the lessons, and start righting the wrongs so Swansea City can begin looking upwards again.

These are some of the key areas where things have gone awry...

Losing the Swans' special identity

(Image: South Wales Evening Post)

For me the slide began three years ago when the new owners came in and the club began to lose its identity.

If the Swans didn't exactly become a global brand, the club certainly became internationally owned.

Yet Swansea's very success down the years was based upon the fact that it was locally owned.

It's a small city, a small ground, but an incredibly loyal fan base. But that loyalty has been stretched to the limit.

The supporters feel they don't have a say any more, and yet they are the very people who should matter most. Without them there is no football club.

It's my opinion that club have gone too much away from their local support. I accept times change and you have to move on, but sometimes it proves detrimental.

Let's be honest, the current owners have no real connections with the city of Swansea. We've seen it with fans of other clubs.

Manchester United supporters felt they had lost their identity when the Glazers took over. Likewise Liverpool for a while under Hicks and Gillett.

I feel the same thing with the Swans and somehow they have to find a reconnect.

Questionable manager appointments

I'm one of those who feels Francesco Guidolin was not given a fair crack of the whip. I just sense the Americans had their own way with Bob Bradley, wanting one of their own.

It may be that wasn't actually the case, but that's certainly the way it came across.

Bradley was a disaster. Paul Clement, his replacement, was another in my eyes, even though he kept Swansea up last season.

One of the first things he did was push Alan Curtis to one side, a huge error because Curt was the major link between the players, the fans and the club. Another example of the reconnect being lost, the identity affected.

Yes Clement gets credit from some for what he managed last season, but for me the real test of his ability was to come this year. Sadly, as I suspected, he failed.

I felt he was too narrow minded in his approach and his transfer dealings, more of which I will come onto in a minute, left much to be desired.

We went down the Euro route, signings which flopped badly, when we should have been looking closer to home and also developing our own, one of Swansea's historical strenghts. Since Ben Davies we've had no-one come through until young Connor Roberts recently.

Instead, we brought in European players with big names who proved to be sub-standard for the Swans. Where has that got us? Heading towards the bottom, that's where.

Far too much has been spent for far too little return. I saw this coming and so too, as head coach, should have Clement.

In most manager's offices there are two desks. The assistant's, which has a metaphorical slogan of 'The buck stops over there' and the manager's, which says 'The buck stops here'.

There are some truly brilliant number twos in football and I've no doubt Clement is one of them. But for me he didn't cut the mustard as the main man and I didn't like the way he blamed others in a recent newspaper interview.

I've far more sympathy for Carlos Carvalhal, who inherited a close on impossible situation. He did really well early on, offered hope, but the team has really lacked something in recent games. The spark is missing, results and the lack of goals speak volumes.

Transfer policy

The Swans have netted huge sums of money for players in recent times, Gylfi Sigurdsson, Jonjo Shelvey and Ashley Williams amongst the many they have made a fortune on. That's great business sense, but if you replace quality with bargain basements the whole time then eventually it's going to catch up with you.

And it has. Big time. Regular readers will know I've never been a big fan of Jonjo Shelvey, but he's a darned sight better than anything we've got in the midfield today.

Renato Sanches came in because of Clement's so-called connections with a big club. Can anyone tell me he's been anything other than an utter disaster?

Same with Roque Mesa. He came here with a big reputation from Spanish football, was talked up as this midfield maestro. Well what's he achieved?

There were also others who came in on Clement's watch who, compared to those we let go, were clearly sub-standard.

(Image: Huw Evans Picture Agency)

There is only one Gyfi Sigurdsson, but surely there had to be a better way of replacing his goals and assists.

It's not as if the Swans haven't splashed the cash. Mesa cost £11m, Sam Clucas £17m. Who on earth sanctioned those sums of money for those players?

For the Swans those are vast sums, but how sensible has that spend been?

Somebody needs to hold up their hand here and take responsibility. I'm not convinced anybody will, though. In any case, this decline hasn't just happened overnight, it's been on the cards for the last couple of years.

Lack of leaders

The Swans are locked deep in a relegation fight, but you almost wouldn't know it judging by what I witnessed on the pitch against Southampton and in previous games.

Who's the on-field boss of this team? Where is the desire? Who is going to grab things by the scruff of the neck, gather the players, spell out a few home truths and make sure that when things are going wrong you hang in there for 10 minutes, then put them right?

The kind of thing John Terry always does. Or Ashley Williams did with the Swans.

It was crying out for someone to take control on Tuesday night, but no-one did. Too often I see players looking across to the bench for direction, but I want to see somebody shouting at his team-mates and forcibly leading out there.

(Image: Getty Images Europe)

You can't expect Alfie Mawson to do it, he's still young. But there are players in this team who have been relegated before. Surely they must be saying in the dressing room 'Relegation is a horrible experience, I don't want that to happen to me again.'

Show some damn emotion. It's one of the things I didn't like about Clement, who stood there in the technical area, hands in pocket. No wonder some of the fans didn't take to him.

You compare that to what's happening up the road. Neil Warnock isn't everyone's cup of tea, but he does know how to display passion, how to galvanise everybody.

Swansea City need a bit of that fire and brimstone against Stoke.

Reasons to be optimistic

I want to try to finish on a positive note, but it's not easy.

Mathematically the Swans can still get out of this by beating Stoke and other results going their way.

But the truth is that whatever happens on Sunday, this needs to be a watershed moment and the club have to begin addressing the errors they have made and ensure they are not repeated.

(Image: South Wales Evening Post)

If it is to be the Championship next season, well the Swans did play Wolves in the FA Cup - drew at Molineux and won comfortably down here.

So that's a measure as to what they could be capable of.

Whatever, the fans deserve better and the players need to express themselves more, play with less fear.

Let's hope this is the moment the club hierarchy accept the mistakes that have been made and start the work to rectify them.