The Swansea City captain leads his team into the second half of the season at Blackpool this weekend knowing that a win could be their first in seven after five successive draws followed a home defeat by Birmingham.<\/p>\n
The Swans though remain very much in touch with the chasing pack and Monk believes that with three fixtures in little more than a week they have the chance to really push on and stake a claim to a play off spot.<\/p>\n
Speaking to the Western Mail, Monk said \u201cThis Christmas period can really determine how your season goes, you need to try and keep in touch with the play-offs.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s so many points to play for over the next fortnight or so. If we can go through to mid-January still there or thereabouts, it will give us a really good chance.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast Christmas was a big turning point for us. If we could do something similar this time we would be right up there.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Leeds game (a 3-2 victory) was a big springboard for us. Hopefully today\u2019s game will be the same and allow us to really kick on.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s important we get a win in the bag at the start of the Christmas period, especially after drawing our last five games. We need to get three points on the board today.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for the Swans current form, he continued: \u201cWe know it\u2019s time we got back to winning ways. But I don\u2019t want to make too big a deal of it because, at the end of the day, we have still been performing really well.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have definitely deserved more points than we actually have at the moment. Things just haven\u2019t gone our way at times.<\/p>\n
\u201cHaving said that, we all realise that five points from five games isn\u2019t good enough in terms of the standards we set for ourselves. We put more pressure on ourselves than anyone else can so we know it\u2019s vitally important we get three points.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are good enough and we are performing well enough,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s just a matter of time before the results follow.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we can get that one win it could change everything. We will push on and really challenge for the play-offs.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know now that we are far too good to go down. We won\u2019t get complacent or anything, but we certainly aren\u2019t looking down anymore.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to get better every year. We said that last season and, while it\u2019s a much harder division, that won\u2019t change.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe won\u2019t look over our shoulders now. We will be trying to push the teams above us all the way.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s going to be a really tough game,\u201d he said. \u201cThey are a good team and people really underestimate them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey had some really good results this season and Simon Grayson has done a terrific job on a small budget. They are like us in that respect.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we know we have to be at our best up there. It\u2019s a very difficult place to go.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt all depends on the weather as well because it\u2019s a fairly open pitch. It the wind gets up the ball will swirl everywhere.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are still one of the teams we have to beat. But, if we don\u2019t come out and play to our best, they will turn us over.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Swansea City captain leads his team into the second half of the season at Blackpool this weekend knowing that a win could be their first in seven after five successive draws followed a home defeat by Birmingham. The Swans though remain very much in touch with the chasing pack and Monk believes that with […]<\/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-15822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15822","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=15822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15822\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}