Michael Laudrup is close to being appointed manager of Swansea City following further talks with the club chairman, Huw Jenkins.

The Denmark legend was on a shortlist with Ian Holloway, the Blackpool manager, to succeed Brendan Rodgers at the Liberty Stadium and is favourite to be in the role by the end of the week. The 47-year-old former Juventus, Barcelona and Real Madrid player is a free agent having resigned from Real Mallorca in September over the dismissal of his assistant, Erik Larsen, who could join him in south Wales.

Jenkins, set to lose out to Liverpool in the pursuit of Gylfi Sigurdsson, despite agreeing a club record £6.8m fee for the Iceland midfielder with Hoffenheim, has denied a deal is done with Swansea's next manager. But the chairman is expected to install Laudrup upon his return from holiday on Wednesday night having always hoped to conclude the search for Rodgers's replacement by the end of this week.

"If I had not been able to make progress, I wouldn't have been in Cyprus," Jenkins told the South Wales Evening Post. "We knew roughly what we were going to do even before I came out. That's what we've tried to get on with and obviously progress has been made. Hopefully now I can get back home and bring the process to a conclusion. There are always things to consider and that will be the case for us right up until the last minute. Nothing is concluded until it is concluded. Until everything is ironed out and finalised, these things are never over the line."

The Swansea chairman revealed his board has been fully briefed on negotiations and a search that has included approaches to Marcel Desailly and the Wigan assistant manager, Graeme Jones, among others. He added: "The average length of time it has taken us to appoint a manager in the past is 15 days. That takes us up to Friday this time around, and I am hopeful that we will fit in again with our average.

"It's not a case of coming back and discussing things with the board of directors, because I have been in touch with them every day. We have been trying to push things forward this week and I am hopeful that we will soon get things sorted."

Laudrup commenced his coaching career with the Danish national team in 2000 and enjoyed success at Brondby and Getafe before enduring troubled spells with Spartak Moscow and Mallorca. His former Denmark team-mate and the former Swansea manager, Jan Molby, said: "I'm at a hotel in the Ukraine with an awful lot of Danish journalists and they all seem pretty sure that Denmark is about to have their first manager in the Premier League."

Molby added: "I think he'll do well. I know Michael was very impressed with the way things are done [in the Premier League], the way in which he is in control of footballing matters, selling of players, buying of players.

"I know that's some of the problems he's had at previous clubs and of course he has a very specific way he wants to play. He was strongly influenced by Johan Cruyff when he was at Barcelona in the late 1980s, early 90s. That's how he wants to play his football, that's how Swansea played last year under Brendan Rodgers, so if it happens I think it's a marriage made in heaven."