South Korean seems to have slipped down the pecking order at the Liberty
This is a really strange one if true. Last season Ki Sung-Yueng played as a defensive midfielder for the duration, and was blatantly being played out of position. Despite this, he performed admirably, as a couple of statistical blogs I put together showed (click here or here), and I felt at times he was receiving slightly harsher treatment than, say, Jonathan De Guzman.
Ki & Bartley appear to both be "board signings", as they have regularly taken second preference to players brought in by Laudrup, and I feel for Ki in particular as, lack of goals aside, I thought he couldn't have done much more than he managed to achieve last season. Most accurate passer in the Premier League - not bad for your first season in the biggest league in the world when you're being asked to play an unfamiliar role in a team who play a very specific type of football.
As for the ongoing rumours themselves - Sunderland & Everton? Why would we loan a quality player to teams who we could realistically expect to see occupying a similar league position to ourselves come the end of the season? Martinez would no doubt love to have the Korean in his squad, whereas with Sunderland maybe we feel bad that we took £5million off them for Danny Graham...
Personally, I think Ki is a player who has the potential to be a really, really good servant to Swansea City, and I think if he was given regular game-time with a bit more freedom he'd shine. Sadly, given the team lineups we've witnessed to date this season it doesn't appear he's going to get much of a look in, so while I wouldn't like to see him depart I'd much prefer it to be a loan than a permanent move. That being said, I'd imagine there'd be some kind of loan fee going on this late in the day, and we do love making money!
It's a double edged-sword really - would you rather loan him to a club who operate at the same level as yourselves, so that he comes back even more acclimatised to the Premier League, or a club where you know his performances will definitely not hinder your own team's? There's nothing worse than one of your players starring for another side and costing your own team a league position or two...
With transfer deadline day rapidly appearing on the horizon, I've no doubt we'll see bids for a few of our players. Let's hope that whatever happens, Ki gets to play a lot of football this season.