Monk Enjoys Leeds Decision

Monk has spoken out in recent weeks about the feeling of not knowing whether his side was Champions or not but the news made for double joy in a week when he was named as players player of the year at the clubs annual awards dinner.

Monk was denied the chance to lift the League One title in front of his own supporters last week at the Liberty and the league are yet to confirm whether the trophy will be at the Withdean tomorrow for one final celebration of a season that has been full of them.

But it was the news that Leeds had failed in their appeal on their fifteen point deduction that brought a smile to most Swansea fans faces yesterday and Garry Monk was one of those

“Speak to any team in the league and their supporters – probably barring Leeds – and they will tell you we’ve been the best team in this division and we’ve deserved our title,” said Monk, in today's Western Mail. “Now it’s great to finally have it made official so nothing more can be said about it.

“It’s been a strange situation and it got to a point where it became tiring talking about it.

“And I think the Football League have been terrible in the way they’ve dealt with the situation. I don’t know the ins or the outs or the reasons why Leeds should or should not have had their points back, but in terms of Swansea City justice has been done.

“It’s frustrating because nothing like this will happen again – it just had to happen when it was our year.”

“Nothing can take anything away from the actual achievement,” added Monk. “But I’ll be honest and say it wasn’t the same. We rightly celebrated promotion against Gillingham and that was fantastic, but against Yeovil and Leyton Orient it wasn’t quite the same and we were celebrating without really knowing if that was that.

“The hardest thing to do in professional football is to win a league title – but we managed to do it.

“And when you achieve something as fantastic as that you want to really enjoy the moment and enjoy it with as many of your fans as possible. But that moment was taken away.

“You watch Sky Sports and you see the clips of it every year, teams lifting the trophies and celebrating in front of their own fans, but we didn’t get that when there was no real reason in the end why we couldn’t.

“But now we know and we will go out there to make sure we enjoy every moment of it at Brighton.”