Exclusive: New Swansea City manager update revealed involving Alan Sheehan | OneFootball

FLW can exclusively reveal that Sheehan has the backing of Swansea's players to be handed the manager's job on a permanent basis.

Swansea City's players want interim boss Alan Sheehan to be handed the manager's job on a permanent basis, sources have exclusively told Football League World.

The 38-year-old has been in caretaker charge of the Swans since Luke Williams' departure from the club was announced on 17 February.

Williams had won just one of his last nine Championship games prior to his sacking, but a 3-0 home win over play-off-chasing Blackburn Rovers in Sheehan's first game leading the side brought a much-needed lift to the Swansea.com Stadium.

Swansea sit 10 points above the relegation zone in 16th ahead of this weekend's round of fixtures, with the Jacks' next game coming on Tuesday 4 March as they travel to Deepdale to take on Preston North End.

Alan Sheehan has the backing of Swansea City players for permanent manager's job

Football League World can exclusively reveal that Sheehan has the support of his Swansea players to become the club's next permanent manager.

However, Swansea's hierarchy are unlikely to make any decision regarding the appointment of Williams' successor until after March's international break (17th-25th) has concluded.

Therefore, this could provide Sheehan with the ideal opportunity to use the next four Championship games before the pause as his chance to showcase why he should be handed the keys full-time.

He hasn't been handed the most straightforward run of fixtures prior to the international break, however, with the away trip to Preston followed by clashes with three promotion-chasing sides: Middlesbrough, Watford and Burnley respectively.

However, if Swansea can come out the other side of that gauntlet of fixtures with a healthy number of points bagged, then the club's top brass may struggle to justify not handing Sheehan the job permanently.

Having the entire playing squad behind him will no doubt put Sheehan in a really strong position to land the job, as ultimately, a happy dressing room often correlates to better performances and results on the pitch.

Sheehan has a vast amount of experience of being in many different dressing rooms during his long playing career, and he will have come across these kinds of situations before and observed the different strategies that managers have deployed to get the players pulling in the same direction.

He's also previously hinted that he would be interested in taking the Swansea job full-time: "You see, building a case, you'd understand that I'd want it. You would think that," he said after the Blackburn win.

"Let's see what happens. There's a lot of stuff happening at the football club, and if we concentrate on me, on any point, I don't really like that. Let's concentrate on giving our positive energy to the players and let all that other stuff take care of itself."