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Swansea City chairman Huw Jenkins has broken his silence and launched a staunch defence of his running of the club amid a storm of criticism over his position.

In his pre-Crystal Palace programme notes, Jenkins used his column to express his feelings in the wake of Paul Clement's sacking.

Liberty chiefs parted company with the head coach on Wednesday evening - with Clement's name not mentioned in the chairman's column.

Jenkins stressed his commitment to Swansea and the lengths to which he and his fellow shareholders went to ensure the financial stability of the club before the American investment.

Jenkins said in his notes: "I started watching Swansea City roughly 50 years ago next month. For the majority of my time as a supporter, I can only remember the club moving from one crisis to another, season after season, apart from our well-documented climb from the old Fourth Division to the First and back again - in the 1980s.

"When I read some of the recent social media comments directed mainly at me and, more importantly, at our manager and players, I find it extremely disappointing and sad.

"However, one article on social media made me think. 'We want our club back' someone wrote, before another one asked 'what does that mean?'

"But more importantly I thought 'what time in our 100-year history doe we want to return our club to?'

"That's more to the point and far more worrying in my eyes. Yes, things are not going very well at the moment but we are are all determined to get back on track - and I will give everything I can to help us achieve that.

"The promise I made to myself when I first took up the position of chairman back in 2002 was to ensure throughout my tenure that we never returned to the day we all thought were the norm for the majority of our 100-year existence - that was both on the field and how we operated financially off it.

"Since we joined the Premier League back in 2011, we have had to show a transfer fee surplus to pay our way and to increase our players' salary budget just to compete at Premier League level.

"We have also proudly built two new training complexes for a total outlay for £30million which, I may add, are the envy of many.

"I can also guarantee one thing, that when I eventually hand over the reins to someone else, we will have a squad of players greater in transfer value than we owe our banks in overdraft borrowings,.

"The new majority shareholders are now financially responsible for our overdraft borrowings, which is massive difference to how we operated our football club pre-share sale."

Jenkins revealed that before the arrival of Jason Levien and Steve Kaplan that the club were facing financial uncertainty, and had to sell players to balance the books to see them through to the end of the 2015-16 season.

"We were sailing close to the wind back in January 2016 when we had to sell Jonjo Shelvey to help our cash flow and see us through to the end of the season as we didn't have one shareholder with the financial capability top carry our football club forward," he added.

"These are just plain facts and explain the parameters we must work within each season just to balance the books and ensure we can survive as club if relegation eventually happens.

"The constant threat of relegation must always be considered because it is vital that Swansea City Football Club is still able to operate on a sound financial footing and never return to the dark days when the threat of losing professional football in Swansea was very real one."