Bob Bradley is the perfect man for the Swansea City job

Bob Bradley has a rather higher opinion of himself. Not so long ago the American claimed himself to be a manager of Pep Guardiola’s standard. “Maybe I’m stupid, but I think I’m a manager in and around that level,” he insisted earlier this year. It might have been a tactic to prick the ears of Premier League chairmen and owners, puffing out his chest to ensure England’s elite at least took note, but he will now have the chance to prove his assertion.

The 58-year-old was appointed Swansea City’s new manager on Monday, replacing Francesco Guidiolin as boss of the struggling South Wales club. Bradley’s name was one that came out of left field, but the Swans are accustomed to pulling names from obscurity. The American adds his name to a list that already includes Michael Laudrup and Guidolin himself.

But just because Bradley wasn’t the obvious candidate doesn’t mean he’s not the right candidate. In fact, the American is the perfect man for the situation Swansea currently find themselves in. If Bradley could be defined as anything over the course of his career it is as a crisis manager, and while the Swans are not quite in full blown crisis but times of trouble are on the clock.

Under Guidolin Swansea City became a club without much of a direction. Bradley will inject much needed ambition at the Liberty Stadium, the kind of ambition that led him to using Guardiola as a personal yardstick. If the American truly believes himself to be that good he will expect a similar standard from his team, certainly a higher standard than the Swans have demonstrated so far this season.

While Bradley doesn’t quite possess a trademark style, adapting his formation and tactical blueprint depending on the players at his disposal, he is renowned as a maximiser, making the most of what he has. He did that as USA manager, taking the country to the last 16 of the 2010 World Cup, and he did that with Stabaek too, taking the tiny Norwegian club from newly promoted club to the Europa League in the space of just two years. His success in Egypt was tempered by the uprising he found upon his arrival there, but he left having taken a country on the brink of civil war to within one game of the World Cup.

Bradley is an over-achiever, with the majority of his success coming at clubs that didn’t necessarily expect it. He is yet to take charge of a team that didn’t at least acknowledge his work in his wake, with American fans generally of the opinion that he was harshly sacked as US national team boss in 2011. Swansea City have bagged themselves a manager with something of a cult following, but he has now propelled himself into the Premier League mainstream.

It’s an opportunity he has long courted, once bemoaning English football’s managerial merry-go-round. “I think that in many cases decision-makers play it safe,” Bradley said in an interview last year, his frustration at being continually overlooked bubbling to the surface. “There’s certainly a network. There are still a lot of good managers. There are also a lot of bad managers. It’s not to say that sometimes you don’t shake your head at how certain guys keep popping up in jobs. Think a little bit outside the box and look a little closer to see how a person manages, how the teams play.”

Now he has been given his chance at the top of the English game. Bradley might not boast the pedigree of some linked with the Swansea City job in recent weeks, with Ryan Giggs passed over for the position, but he is tailored for the task at hand. Chairman Huw Jenkins very rarely makes a bad appointment and in Bradley he has found another coach well suited to the South Wales club and the situation they have created for themselves.

Swansea City embrace their identity as over-achievers, with the club punching above its weight just by being in the Premier League. Bradley has been hired to ensure that they stay there, and his background suggests that he’s the ideal, if not completely obvious, figure to do that. Swansea have given Bradley the chance he’s always wanted, but not through goodwill or charity. He’s earned it.