Swansea City made huge loss on cult hero despite 33-goal haul | OneFootball

Andre Ayew remains one of the finest Swansea City stars in recent memory, but did he represent good value for money?

Forget about the seven-year stay in the Premier League and the corresponding European adventures, even competing at the top-end of the Championship ladder now feels like a distant memory as far as Swansea City are concerned.

After finishing 10th under the stewardship of now-West Ham United boss Graham Potter in the 2018/19 campaign, their first back in the Championship following relegation, Swansea secured successive finishes inside the league's top-six.

Both campaigns ultimately concluded with defeat to Brentford, who denied Swansea of promotion back to the Premier League in the play-off semi-finals and then in the Wembley showpiece in May 2021.

At the very forefront of those near-misses was Andre Ayew, and the Ghanaian forward remains quite arguably the single-finest player to have turned out at the Swansea.com Stadium since their top-flight relegation all the way back in 2018.

Ayew is still adored by the Jack Army faithful to this very day, and for good reason. Whether he ended up representing strong value for money, however, is another matter entirely.

Andre Ayew's Swansea City career

Ayew's association with the Welsh side first started back in the summer of 2015, when Swansea pulled off a mightily-ambitious move for his services after he left Marseille on a free transfer. The then-26-year-old joined Swansea after scoring 60 goals for throughout his time with French giants, with his performances having even seen him named BBC African Footballer of the Year.

He spent just one season in south Wales, initially, and scored on 12 occasions before being snapped up by West Ham for £20.5 million.

His time in east London didn't quite go to plan, however, and he returned to Swansea approximately 18 months later in a deal worth a reported £18 million.

Ayew was unable to help Swansea stave off relegation to the Championship after joining in the middle of the term and promptly headed out on loan to Fenerbache, where he endured a mixed campaign but returned to star for two second-tier seasons.

Few would have expected a player of Ayew's quality, experience, pedigree and pay packet - the forward was on a stunning reported £90,000 weekly salary in the Championship - to have been willing to strut his stuff in the second division, which only helped to further endear him to the Swansea faithful.

The winger inspired both play-off finishes under Steve Cooper.

His first season in the Championship yielded a return of 16 goals and seven assists from 46 games as he established himself among the division's leading operators - as you would expect, all things considered.

Ayew stayed put in spite of Swansea's first failed stab at promotion and was similarly inspirational in 2020/21, with only five players outscoring his tally of 17 league strikes.

But Swansea's play-off final heartbreak spelled the end of Ayew's time at the club. Swans were never going to be financially capable of matching his wage demands, while someone of his calibre was only ever going to spend a certain amount of time outside of top-division football.

He promptly left on a free transfer and went on to spend a year-and-a-half with Qatari outfit Al-Sadd before making a brief reunion with Cooper at Nottingham Forest in 2023, which preceded a long-awaited return to his homeland with Le Havre, where he remains to this day.

Swansea City made a huge loss on cult hero Andre Ayew despite his exploits

There is no denying the quality Ayew displayed in the Championship for Swansea. He was classes above the level on many occasions and Swansea would not have flirted near so close with a Premier League return had they not had his services to call upon.

Unfortunately, though, it simply wasn't enough. Despite the best efforts of the 89-cap Ghana international, Swansea ultimately fell short of achieving promotion and one simply has to question the value for money they received by returning him from West Ham, having initially made an impressive and considerable profit with the sale to the Hammers.

Keeping Ayew in the final year of his contract always felt like a case of high risk versus high reward.

Perhaps the Swans hierarchy felt the financial benefit of achieving promotion to the Premier League - the Championship play-off final is widely-regarded as the most lucrative fixture in club football, with its annual winner projected to net at least £140 million according to estimates - was more worthwhile than playing it safe and cashing in but seeing their top-flight return hopes decreased.

The gain of promotion would have been stronger than the loss of Ayew's departure, which does offer reasoning behind Swansea's decision to keep him at the club. However, that's not how it played out, of course, and the value for money within the deal has to be assessed in spite of the sentiment and starring displays.

The same can be said for his staggering salary, which, if it is to be believed, would have cost Swansea up to £9.36 million across the two years he represented the side in the Championship. That's not factoring in his season-long loan with Fenerbache as it's unclear just how much of his contract they were covering.