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It was the summer of 1994. Burnley had just won promotion via the play offs and Jimmy Mullen was looking for a replacement for John Pender to partner Steve Davis in the centre half. We signed Mark Winstanley, but unknown to most of us we had just about wrapped up a deal for Swan, then with Port Vale.
Then Plymouth Argyle boss Peter Shilton, who had seen Burnley set sail for Wembley after beating his team in the play offs, made a move for him. Swan takes up the story at a time when his wife was six weeks away from having their first baby.
"Swan writes: "Even though I was more or less committed to Burnley, we decided I'd speak to Shilts. I'd ask for a £70,000 signing on fee and more than Burnley were offering. He'd obviously say no, but at least he couldn't claim I'd snubbed him.
"He rang the following morning. I told him what I wanted. 'Give me a couple of minutes,' he said. 'I'll ring you back'. Five minutes later he called and said 'OK, we'll do that.'
"I thought F****** hell, what have I done? I looked at the missus and said 'Sorry love, we'll have to go."
With that sort of beginning, at a level of football lower than he would have played at Burnley, things were never going to go swimmingly, particularly when he didn't want to be there in the first place.
Argyle made a disastrous start to the new season, and it ended in relegation for them, and it didn't take Swan long to decide he wanted out. He continues: "It didn't take long before news leaked out that I wanted out. The story made banner headlines in the local press.
"When it broke, I was asked to do a television interview. One of the first questions was 'If you're so desperate to leave, why did you come to Plymouth in the first place?' 'For the money'. It was an honest answer and I knew it would upset people.
"I hoped it would give me an excuse to push harder for a move. Straightaway, the whole town seemed to be in uproar and I was public enemy number one."
He continues of his time at Plymouth, how he head butted striker Kevin Nugent at the Christmas party which led to a car park scrap that left him with a fat lip.
He describes manager Shilton as 'pretty naïve' when it came to tactics and admitted that Shilton's replacement Neil Warnock did all he could to get him to stay but his mind was made up.
He admitted: "I became totally disruptive, like a big kid. If we were doing hurdles for speed training, I'd run through them instead of jumping over them. I kicked people up in the air in practice matches, took shots at goal from inside my own half, anything to annoy Warnock."
He became involved in a dispute with them over his signing on fee but once that was resolved he jumped ship and did what he'd intended doing a year earlier and signed for Jimmy Mullen at Burnley.
"It felt as though I had just got out of jail," Swan reports.
The book contains stories from his sixteen year career with seven different league clubs and his friendship with Robbie Williams.