Photo credit: AFP.

Alan Curtis will remain as Swansea City manager until the end of the season, the struggling Premier League club announced on Thursday. Curtis, who had three spells as a Swansea player in the 1970s and 1980s, took over from the sacked Garry Monk in December and won just one of his five games as caretaker boss, drawing two and losing two of the other four.

But Swansea chairman Huw Jenkins has been sufficiently encouraged by the team’s performances to hand the 61-year-old the reins for the rest of the campaign as the south Wales side bid to extend their stay in the top-flight to a sixth successive season.

“Alan Curtis and the current staff set-up will continue until the end of the season,” Jenkins told Swansea’s website.

“We firmly believe it is the right decision for Swansea City. Alan has been with us through good and bad times and was part of the management team that helped the club secure its Football League status over 12 years ago.

“He is fully aware of the next important job he has ahead of him to dig deep and find the required levels of performance and motivation to secure our Premier League status – our main goal this season.

“We believe there is nobody with more knowledge and experience of the club to do that than Alan Curtis.”

Monk had been axed after a dismal run of only one win from 12 matches, and despite the change in managers, Swansea are still 17th in the Premier League, just one place and two points above the relegation zone.

Former Sunderland boss Gus Poyet and former Chelsea manager Roberto Di Matteo had been among the reported candidates to replace Monk. But Jenkins admitted that perilous position had made it difficult to persuade top-class managers to take over the Liberty Stadium in mid-season, so instead he opted to stick with Curtis, who had been working as a member of Swansea’s coaching staff before Monk’s dismissal:

“I know some people will query why we didn’t have a replacement lined up when we parted company with Garry Monk, but we didn’t expect to be in the situation we were in when you look at our position mid-September.

“Finding a replacement hasn’t been easy because we didn’t want to make a short-term decision that would be detrimental to the club long-term.

“It’s a unique situation for us and I think we are only now appreciating what other Premier League clubs in our position have gone through in the last five years.

“We’ve spoken to a lot of potential managers. Some didn’t want to leave the clubs they were at this late stage in the season, while others didn’t want to put their reputation on the line by joining a club at the wrong end of the table.

“In the end, we felt the best decision was to keep things in-house and change as little as we can until taking stock in the summer.”