Monk: Players Won’t Be Disheartened After Defeat

Swansea City manager Garry Monk promises that the players won’t be ‘disheartened’ despite suffering a heavy 4-2 defeat away at Chelsea today.

Neil Taylor’s excellent cross early on forced John Terry to slide the ball into his own net, but Diego Costa showed his quality yet again, netting a hatrick before Jonjo Shelvey added a late consolation.

The Swans looked excellent early on, showed good balance in their play, competed well and frustrated the hosts, but that soon faded as Chelsea took control.

It was crucial that the 1-0 lead was maintained until half time, but Costa headed home a corner just a minute before the referee blew his whistle.

The Swans would have wanted to start the second half as they did the first, but Chelsea were now in full flow and you soon wondered how many goals they would score thanks to the excellent attacking quality they possessed in the team.

Monk felt his side should have scored a goal or two more when they were on top, but he was still pleased by his players’ efforts:

‘I can promise you the players won’t be disheartened,’

‘We know what we are – we are very realistic in our work and you have to put it into perspective when you look at who we were playing.

‘The top five or six teams can spend what they want on players and we have to understand where we are.

‘Of course we wanted to keep our unbeaten record going, but we will lose games and I can be pleased with our day’s work overall.’

‘In the first half we played some really good stuff – some of the best football we have played in the Premier League when we’ve come away to one of the big clubs.

‘Maybe we could have scored more than one goal – and we should have got through to half-time in front.

‘In the second half, you saw the power and the quality Chelsea have got and we couldn’t quite contain them.

‘That’s disappointing, but the players played with a good attitude and they tried to do what we asked them to do.’