One of the worst signings we ever made

There have been quite a few but you have probably never heard of this one. With us for 5yrs and never ever played a game.

YAYA TOURE; midfield, 6ft 4in, Champions League winner, £24m transfer funded by billionaire Arab owner.

Leon Britton; midfield, 5ft 5in, Football League Trophy winner, transfer funded by bucket collections.

If anything sums up the new world Swansea City find themselves in, perhaps this midfield match-up at Manchester City this evening says it best.

Little versus large in every sense.

The size of the task is not lost on Britton as the players and the clubs that inhabit different worlds get set to share the same Premier League stage tonight.

But neither is the fact that he deserves the chance to take it on. After all, it has been a long road for little Leon.

Literally.

“I can remember when I first came here on loan and driving down the M4 and wondering when it was going to end,” Britton recalls of his 2002 switch from top-flight West Ham to the League Two survival struggle going on at the Vetch. “I didn’t really know where Swansea was.”

Or, quite probably, where his career was heading.

After the Hammers had paid Arsenal £400,000 (A HUGE amount for a 16yr old back in the 90’s)– a then record for a 16-year-old – Britton’s first-team chances had been blocked at Upton Park.

Impressing while on loan and helping keep the Swans in the Football League as a result, Britton’s permanent switch the following summer was made possible when the club’s Supporters’ Trust launched their ‘Battle for Britton,’ passing buckets around the North Bank to help cover his wages.

Taking a pay cut from the reported £2,500 he was on in London, it was the first step towards taking on £250,000-a-week Toure. Something the player says he always felt possible, even if not quite in the way it happened.

“At the time if you asked any young lad in Premier League academies and they all would have thought they were going to make it,” he says. “I don’t think I was big-headed after the fuss of moving for a big fee at a young age, or it wasn’t that I didn’t work hard. It’s just that – now I look back at it – I wasn’t good enough.

“Of course I didn’t feel that way at the time so the idea was to move to Swansea, do well and move up the ladder as quickly as possible. I still dreamed of playing in the Prem, you don’t lose that ambition even if you know you’ve a long way to go.

“As it turned out, the club progressed year-on-year as I feel I did with them. It went hand-in-hand and because I grew attached to the club and the rapport we built-up, coming this far makes it all the more sweeter.”

There was one move inbetween of course, the short-lived switch to Sheffield United a twist in the tale and his return something Britton acknowledges leaves him fortunate.

“I could have been lining up against Oldham away in League One last Saturday,” the 28-year-old says. “Instead, I’m live on Sky at Manchester City a week later in the Premier League. I’m very lucky. The club could have easily told me my ship had sailed after I left, but they took me back and I want to repay that faith.”

Certainly the bucket collection has been repaid a few times over, fans’ faith in the technical ability of the diminutive dynamo justified.

“I remember thinking how amazing that was, to have supporters willing to put their hand in their own pockets to bring me to the club,” Britton says, West Ham releasing him on a free with the apparent consensus that he was too small to make it in the big time. “I think my parents and my girlfriend at the time threw a few quid in and it shows where the club were at the time. I’m sure if the chairman had his way he’d be asking for them to do the same again!”

Said in jest of course, even if the Swans are the “poor relations” in their new Premier League surroundings. Financially healthy, but far from wealthy when you consider there will be a £260m gulf between the value of the squads on show at the Etihad Stadium tonight.

“You can’t think about it like that,” argues Britton. “It seems crazy when you look on things on paper but this is where we are now, this is the reality.

“We’ve earned the right to be here and it’s about proving that again.

“It’s unbelievable the difference in where we’ve come from and the attention on us since the days of us changing at the training ground in a hut on the side of the pitch.

“There’s obviously been a buzz around the city since May 30 because this is what we’ve been waiting for and where we all want to be.

“I’m not sure we’ll ever really get used to it because every game is going to be special for us.

“We’ll enjoy it because we’ve worked hard to get here.

“But it’s not just about us getting here and going to the big grounds and all that, we don’t just want to taste it.

“We want to make sure we stay here and keep improving and progressing as we have done.

“We’ve worked hard to get here, but we know the real hard work is only just starting and we realise it’s going to a huge challenge.”