We Need To Manage Games Better

Swansea City manager Garry Monk says that his team need to manage games better ahead of Saturday’s home game against Southampton.

It’s been an excellent start for the Swans so far this season, with three wins and a defeat at Chelsea, but Monk insists the ‘game management’ quality needs improving after easily controlling of the majority of their matches so far this season.

Swansea City enjoyed dominant spells in games against Burnley and Chelsea but they found themselves under pressure in the second half. Burnley didn’t have the quality in front of goal to get an equaliser, but Chelsea were world class as they came from a goal down to win convincingly 4-2. Monk’s side also missed a key chance at Stamford Bridge to make it 2-2 when Gomis missed a one-on-one chance with the goalkeeper. Instead, Chelsea took their opportunities, make it 3-1 and maintained their 100% winning start.

It might have been away at Chelsea, but Monk is a manager who is always looking for improvement and he wants to see his team manage games better, rather than fade away in the second half:

‘We’re at a stage where for 55 minutes we competed very well against a top side in Chelsea,’

‘Now we’re trying to edge closer over time to a situation where we can we can really give one of the big teams a game over 90 minutes.

‘What we have to do is learn from the mistakes we make.

‘It’s about game management, managing the game within the game. We have to manage the periods when we’re under pressure properly and come through them next time.’

‘We’ve been working on worrying about ourselves, trying to be the best we can be,’ he added.

‘We’ve done that very well at the start of the season and even at Chelsea, especially in the first half, we played some very good stuff ? we should have really been taking more of our chances because some of them were very good.

‘We can improve on a lot of things, but the experience of Chelsea will stand the players in good stead.’

The Swans face a tough test against Southampton and they will have to manage games for longer, as unlike Burnley, the Saints will have the quality to take their chances.