“Management Is All-Consuming”

So much has happened since he was given that job then it is easy to forget that it really is only 18 months but what an amazing time it has been as he led the Swans to a record breaking finish last season and has started this one with a style that has already upset the Champions Chelsea on their own patch.

The Swans may not have won at Stamford Bridge on the opening day but they could easily have done so as they took the game to their hosts from the first minute and gave us every belief that we could even go better this time around than we did last time.

Monk started his preparation for the new season almost as soon as the old one finished. I remember talking briefly to him at the end of season awards dinner and you just knew that he would not have much of a summer break ahead of him as he got to work to secure the players that he wanted.

Following that there was the detail that went into the pre-season planning and now it is full swing into the season then there must be a time when he wonders what his family look like such is the demands on a modern day football manager

“It’s all-consuming. You have your home life, you don’t really have a social life — it can be hard” said Monk.

“But you know the reason why you’re doing it and I can only do it this way, the way I am doing it.

“Perhaps I’ll find a balance more in the future.

“It’s worse when things are not going well. You bear the brunt for it all as the manager. Everyone looks to you, especially when it’s not going well.

“You have got to have broad shoulders. You have got to accept it when things haven’t gone right.

“You have to try to find a reason and then move on.”

“You do miss it a little, the camaraderie,” he say when asked about his relationship with the players he once played alongside

“We don’t go out for meals — as the manager you get blackballed!

“But it’s part of the job, I knew it taking it on and the players knew it from their side.

“There are moments, at the right time, when I’ll bring myself out and talk to them as I would have done, but they are few and far between.”