Paul Clement has admitted he needs to “do some business” in the transfer market after Manchester United did their brand of on-field business at the Liberty Stadium.
The Swansea City manager saw his side capitulate to a 4-0 home defeat that underlined the need for recruitment before the end of the transfer window in 11 days’ time.
With £45m in his pocket following the club record sale of Gylfi Sigurdsson to Everton, Clement says he has the backing of the owners in bringing in reinforcements for a team which is weak in too many areas.
“When you haven’t got Glyfi and Fernando Llorente, we are weaker,” said Clement.
“We still have a good squad, here, but we need more quality players to be competitive.
“We are getting texts and emails from various parties. But it’s clear the necessity is there. We need to do some good business. And it’s a view shared by others in the club.””
Swansea’s five-man defence held firm until a minute before the break, but once Clement took Kyle Bartley off and reverted to a back four just past the hour, the Swans collapsed and conceded three goals in four minutes.
Clement defiantly insisted: “I don’t want to be a coach who is happy to lose 1-0 at home.
“So I made the changes to get us back in the game, but we played into their strengths.
“Last week I was more disappointed with the performance than the result.
“Today I’m more disappointed with the result than some of things I’ve seen. I was happy with some of the things defensively, not so happy offensively.
“We went a goal down and tried to do something about it but we got punished and it’s hard to take.”
Swansea, who earned a goalless draw in their opening game at Southampton, are still looking for their first goal of the Premier League season.
They travel to MK Dons in the Carabao Cup next before a league trip to Crystal Palace and Clement admits they need to recover quickly from Saturday’s defeat.
He added: “The first step is to make sure we don’t let the defeat affect confidence. No-one wants to get beat by that kind of score, however well we’ve done for part of the game, in the end we got a bit of a hammering.
“We have to make sure we regroup quickly, I don’t anticipate doing massive changes for our League Cup game in midweek, we have to work on our game on all sides and then next we have a trip to Crystal Palace. That becomes really important.
“Of course we need to do some things in the transfer window. We have good players here but we need more good players if we want to be competitive this season.”
It could have been a very different story for Paul Pogba though, as two rather rash fouls in the first half nearly ended his day prematurely.
The first saw him cynically hack down midfielder Tom Carroll in the 26th minute for which referee Jon Moss showed him a yellow card, and just four minutes later, the France international caught Swansea left-back Martin Olsson late as he clipped his ankle.
The home fans called for Pogba to be shown a second yellow card, but Clement joined United manager Jose Mourinho in insisting Moss made the right decision.
“If I was in Jose’s positon and my player had been sent off for that, I think I would have thought it was harsh,” said Clement.
“I have seen them given, but I would have been disappointed if my player had sent off in those circumstances.
“Also, I am not going to blame that on why we lost the game.”
Asked if he feared Pogba might be sent off, Mourinho said: “No, because I didn’t think the first yellow card was so deserved.
“The first yellow card is a little bit out of context because I saw Jonathan had a criteria where certain actions wouldn’t bring yellow cards.
“There were actions, especially one on Matic, that is a yellow card and he decided to speak with the player.
“I thought with Paul he would do the same, so when the yellow card came I was a bit surprised. So, I didn’t fear the second yellow card.”
Having stayed on the field, Pogba then rubbed salt into the Swans’ wounds by crashing a header against the bar, which was then swept in for the opening goal by Eric Bailly.
