Swansea confirmed their second signing of the summer window on June 19, with St Etienne left-back Franck Tabanou joining on a three-year deal. The former France U21 international revealed that a meeting with manager Garry Monk convinced him to join up at the Liberty:
“I was aware of Swansea’s interest in me for a while, but unfortunately it didn’t happen back in January. But I’ve been watching them closely ever since and I like the way they play the game; their whole philosophy on football. I was particularly impressed with the manager because he knew everything about me. I was also touched by the fact that he said I was a top signing for Swansea. I am keen to show I am able to perform in the Premier League – the best league in the world:
Monk, meanwhile, talked up the new boy’s potential in an interview with the Swans official website earlier this week:
“It’s an excellent signing that I’m looking forward to working with individually and as part of the group. He is exactly the type of player we are looking for. He’s young, talented and looking to make the next step up in his career. He has the right attributes to fit in here and increase the competition and quality in the squad. He’s come from a good club and is an exciting talent that I’m sure the supporters will enjoy watching.”
The History
Born in the suburbs of Paris, Tabanou spent eight years at a handful of local youth academies before joining Toulouse in 2006. He played for their U18 outfit during his first season at the Ligue 2 club, earning a spot in the reserve team for the 2007/08 campaign.
Impressed by Tabanou’s performances for the second string during the 2008/09 season, manager Alain Casanova handed him five senior appearances at the back-end of the campaign, subsequently leading to his first professional contract. The versatile defender cemented a starting berth as a left midfielder in the following season, recording four goals and one assist across 33 league outings.
It wasn’t until the 2010/11 season that Tabanou began to regularly start at the left-back position – a move engendered by Toulouse’s first choice succumbing to multiple injuries. Tabanou featured in both roles throughout his four full seasons at the French club, finishing his spell with 16 goals and 19 assists in 153 appearances. Saint-Etienne then came calling, tying him down to a contract worth in the region of £3.5 million.
Tabanou was initially fielded on the left flank at Saint-Etienne but shifted back into the left-back slot following the departure of Dynamo Kiev loanee Benoit Trémoulinas in the summer of 2014. It was a successful nine and a half months for the Frenchman, who racked up the second-highest number of assists (five) among the squad and was a pivotal component of a rearguard that conceded just 30 goals – only Monaco (26) were breached on fewer occasions.
On the international front, Tabanou is yet to earn a senior cap for France, having tallied 12 appearances for the U21s.
The Prospects
The arrival of Tabanou finally offers competition to incumbent left-back, Neil Taylor, considering that Swansea have lacked depth in that position since Ben Davies made the switch to Tottenham Hotspur last summer. Although the Welsh international established himself as a mainstay in Garry Monk’s side – starting all but four league fixtures last term – the Swans boss may now favour Tabanou’s superior offensive threat.
In his two seasons as a regular starter at the Liberty, Taylor tallied a combined zero goals and four assists, while Tabanou managed one goal and five assists last time out. From a creative standpoint, Swansea’s latest recruit fashioned more key passes (25) than Taylor (22) last season despite playing 543 fewer league minutes – his average of 104.6 minutes per chance created in 2014/15 is sandwiched between Branislav Ivanovic (100.2) and Pablo Zabaleta (105). Furthermore, Tabanou also posed a far greater goal threat than Taylor, firing off 22 shots on goal to his new team-mate’s four.
If Tabanou can forge a way into the starting line-up ahead of Taylor, he could certainly be one to consider, with Monk’s regulars likely to come in around the 5.0 mark in Fantasy Premier League (FPL). Given that Lukasz Fabianksi finished top for goalkeepers and ahead of the Swansea backline options with 151 points in 2014/15, it remains to be seen whether any of the Pole’s defensive team-mates can rival him as an option. Tabanou’s penchant for driving into advanced positions could pique the interest of Fantasy managers, however. Furthermore, as revealed by the YouTube highlights below, the new boy is a skilled free-kick practitioner, whose eye for a long-range strike could see Swansea’s current set-piece specialist, Gylfi Sigurdsson, shared dead-ball duties on occasions.
Nonetheless, Swansea’s unforgiving start to the 2015/16 campaign somewhat limits the appeal of their backline during the early stages. A visit to Chelsea in Gameweek 1 looks highly unlikely to harvest a clean sheet, while home ties against Everton and Manchester United in their first six match-ups (che, NEW, sun, MUN, wat, EVE) should provide stiff tests of a resilient rearguard that racked up 13 shut-outs in the season gone by.
