Swansea manager Roberto Martinez believes his side deserves top billing in league one following their 1-0 victory over Hartlepool on Tuesday night at the Liberty Stadium.<\/p>\n
A late strike from Angel Rangel was enough to return the Swans to the top of the league for the first time in over a month and they recorded their first home league victory since the beginning of October in the process.<\/p>\n
But Roberto declared after the game that his side was worthy of that billing – a place they will hold until next Tuesday at the very least.<\/p>\n
“Our performance really deserved a win and the boys really deserve to sit on top of the league,” he told BBC Sport.<\/p>\n
“We kept our concentration and kept doing the right things. I thought some of the passing and movement in the first half was outstanding.”<\/p>\n
He added: “With a bit more confidence – which a better home record would give us – we would have got the reward of goals and that would have made it a bit easier.<\/p>\n
“But overall the performance was very pleasing. It was a fantastic advert for League One football.”<\/p>\n
The manager was also full of praise of two of his summer signings – Angel Rangel the goalscorer and Dorus De Vries who hobbled off the pitch at the end after lengthy treatment on an injury<\/p>\n
On Rangel: “He’s very happy to do his duties at the back and take the responsibility in one-v-one situations and defend.<\/p>\n
“But then at any opportunity he goes forward and gives us that extra outlet that we need at home – especially when you’re playing against well set-up systems.<\/p>\n
“Full-backs can often prove the difference and I think he deserved it because his performances since coming from Spain have been outstanding.”<\/p>\n
And on De Vries: “Nothing surprises us with him any more,” said Martinez. “That’s what he’s capable of week-in-week-out.<\/p>\n
“He’s a tremendous character and I’m sure after this performance he’s looking forward to going to the training ground and keep improving.<\/p>\n
“That’s the type of mentality he’s got – he’s a winner. I’ve said it before, I think he can play as high as he wants.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Swansea manager Roberto Martinez believes his side deserves top billing in league one following their 1-0 victory over Hartlepool on Tuesday night at the Liberty Stadium. A late strike from Angel Rangel was enough to return the Swans to the top of the league for the first time in over a month and they recorded […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":453,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/453"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15017\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}