By Graham Thomas
Joel Piroe plans to add to his Welsh derby goal with another at home to West Brom on Wednesday night to provide more updates for his next chat with Ruud van Nistelrooy.
The Swans’ young Dutch striker – who has already been compared to a rookie Van Nistelrooy – still has one of the greatest Premier League strikers of his generation on speed dial, even though they stopped working together directly when Piroe left PSV Eindhoven this summer.
Former Manchester United star Van Nistelrooy is now a coach at the Dutch club where he made his name and took a hand in shaping Piroe’s progress.
“Ruud was an amazing striker and under him I enjoyed a lot of good training sessions,” says Piroe, the 22-year-old who is the Swans’ top scorer with six goals in 11 games.
“He used to work with all the strikers at PSV and he was just the best person I could learn from. He can tell you why he did things as a player – not just that he moved to the right or to the left – but why he made the decisions that he did.
“He’s a very good coach. He really helped me with my work in the box, the decisions you make about going into spaces.
“I was learning from the very best and I know for sure that I can always text him for advice and help.”
Tall, rangy and dark-haired, Piroe was compared to Van Nistelrooy when he scored eight goals for the Netherlands U19s, but grew frustrated at rarely being more than a substitute as PSV last season.
That made him decide to try to use the Championship as a stepping stone to the Premier League when the Swans’ cheeky offer of just £1m for him was accepted in July – much to the club’s surprise.
“Everyone understands you have to work for it, but when you have the feeling that it doesn’t really matter what you do, they will still pick someone else, then it becomes really frustrating.
“Sometimes, in that situation, it’s best to look somewhere else.”
Piroe had a season on loan at Sparta Rotterdam but missed their heated clash against Feyenoord and was also on the bench when PSV played Ajax.
It meant he never played in the big Dutch derbies – De Klassieker and De Topper – but lack of experience hardly proved an issue with his calmly struck goal that put the Swans’ 2-0 ahead in their 3-0 victory over Cardiff City last Sunday.
It was Piroe’s seventh goal of the season and third in his last five games and was taken with subtlety as well as skill – the kind of finish from Jamie Paterson’s through ball that suggests Piroe is destined for bigger things than the Championship, whether with the Swans or somewhere else.
“It could not have gone better for me since I came here. We are still working on things as a team and it will be alright.
“The playing style here and what is expected of us, looks a lot like what I was used to. I think the change was easier for me than for my teammates.
“I knew Dutch players who had come here, like Leroy Fer and Luciano Narsingh. The club had a good reputation. I asked them how they liked it here and how they were treated. They had good things to say.
“Scoring against Cardiff was an amazing feeling, we really played well, we are just doing what we had to do and it was wonderful to win 3-0.
“We had a good preparation to the game, the fans were also amazing so we had all the energy and we knew exactly what we needed to do.”
The Swans now welcome West Brom on Wednesday night, with the second-place visitors anxious to cut the six-point gap on leaders Bournemouth.
The Baggies have only lost once this season, but a second successive victory for Russell Martin’s side could life the Swans up to 13th place, depending on other results.
Martin has a fully fit squad to choose from and said: “We won’t go into this game thinking the work is done because we put in a very good performance and beat Cardiff.
“This is a different game, a different form of emotion attached to it, and we have to be on top of our game.
