Mike Ashley is a man known for shrewd financial dealings at Newcastle, but Huw Jenkins at Swansea is making a name for himself too.
He's yet to sell an overrated striker for £35 million, but he did manage to get £23 million for the duo of Scott Sinclair and Joe Allen.
In Sinclair's place came Pablo Hernandez, at a profit too. He was signed for just £5.5 million from Valencia, almost half what West Ham paid Wolves for Matt Jarvis. The club's eye for a deal looks to have been in action again this week.
Swansea snapped up Dwight Tiendalli yesterday, a 26-year-old free agent who will fill in as cover at right-back for long-term absentee Neil Taylor who broke his ankle against Sunderland and is out for the season.
A few facts about Tiendalli, the 26-year-old is a former Holland under-21 international, and has played with Utrecht, Feyenoord, and most recently Twente in Holland, with who he won the title with in 2009/10.
He was a free agent after his contract expired and Swansea have done well to pick him up.
He has six Champions League appearances to his name (including qualifiers) and featured in 16 Europa League matches. Even last season he made 41 appearances for Twente.
If he makes half that for Swansea this campaign then he will be a bargain signing on a free.
When you stack it up the club's latest find means they have acquired Hernandez, Michu, Chico, Kyle Bartley, loaned Jonathan de Guzman, and beaten Liverpool and Arsenal to the £5.5 million signing of Ki Sung-Yeung, for less than they sold two players for this summer.
Credit must of course go to new manager Michael Laudrup as well as Huw Jenkins who is steering the ship while the Dane works with the players first hand and clearly has considerable input on who he wants to bring in.
With seven points out of nine so far they are looking good on the pitch, and off it their profit of £6.5 million in player transfers deserves real credit. Their latest free signing is just the cherry on the top.
image: © Ronnie Macdonald
Dan Coombs
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Dan Coombs is a writer who is keen to embrace the internet revolution. He first started writing for us in June 2011 and commenced his new role as Sports Editor in February 2012.
As a trained journalist he has met famous faces from Mr T to Boris Johnson. He once featured in an England World Cup music video too, but it did not make the charts.
He grew up wanting to be a Formula 1 driver, but it looks like this dream has passed him by. Instead, he hopes you enjoy reading his writing on our site, as we seek to debate the day's sporting hot topics.
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