Luke Williams says he has moved on from speculation linking him to West Bromwich Albion, a distraction which the Swansea City head coach admits he “handled poorly”.
Bookmakers had made Williams favourite to replace Carlos Corberan at the Hawthorns and, having initially failed to quash rumours in media interviews, Williams eventually confirmed he was staying at Swansea.
Ironically, the Swans hosted West Brom on Saturday and, in his programme notes before the 1-1 draw, Swansea chairman Andy Coleman described the speculation as “unhelpful”.
“It’s a situation that I didn’t help. I created a lot of the noise without meaning to,” said Williams.
“There’s been no contact from West Brom to me or my agent or the football club. There’s been no contact at all.
“In fact, my agent has been quite unwell and been in bed for most of the Christmas period, then he phoned me up and said, ‘What have you done? What’s going on?’
“I’m pleased that’s behind us. The players were excellent today. Certainly my group looked like they were unaffected by all the noise.”
Before the West Brom match, Williams had apologised to any fans who may have felt he showed “a lack of commitment” to Swansea by failing to rule out a move to the Baggies.
The former Notts County boss says his light-hearted responses to media questions were because there was “absolutely nothing” in the rumours.
If Swansea’s players might have seemed distracted by such talk during their 4-0 thrashing at Portsmouth on New Year’s Day, the performance in their 1-1 draw with Championship promotion contenders West Brom on Saturday was a fine riposte.
“Against a really top side, I think we competed well,” Williams added.
“We had two really special performances here [wins against QPR and Luton in Swansea’s previous home games] that we’d almost forgotten about because of a really heavy defeat and then this stuff and the speculation that was handled poorly by myself.
“That’s taken our memory away from those two performances and I now hope that we can reflect back with this bit of a break and think ‘we’ve done well in that period of time’ and look forward to the rest of the season now.”