The Swansea City midfielder is an Arsenal fan and will come face to face with one of his heroes this weekend when he comes up against Tony Adams and his Portsmouth side in the FA Cup.<\/p>\n
The Swans travel to face the holders looking to end their reign as cup holders and Pratley admits that facing one of his childhood heroes will be a spur (pardon the pun!) to him.<\/p>\n
Speaking to the Western Mail, Pratley said \u201cI\u2019ve always been an Arsenal fan, and I was a big fan of Tony Adams. He was still captain when I was a kid at Arsenal and I used to go along with my mates and see him and Martin Keown at the back dominating things.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t get to know him when I was at the club, but to fans he was like a god because he was the head of that side and a different class as a defender.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe got labelled a bit as a limited defender, but I don\u2019t think that was really the case \u2013 and now he\u2019s a manager he\u2019s certainly got a proper footballing team at Portsmouth.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, they\u2019re big and strong, probably the biggest team in the Premier, but they are all footballers who like to get it down and play. I know Sean Davis from Fulham and he\u2019s a class example of that.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe tries to get them playing in the right way which could suit us and our game.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have top players, but the way we play and the type of game we use makes it a great test for us to see how far we\u2019ve come as a team and individuals.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had my one game in the Premier back with Fulham and it\u2019s good to get that chance to play on a similar stage again and I can use it to see how far I\u2019ve come since I left that behind.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe only pressure on us is the one that we\u2019re putting on our own shoulders to deliver and to do ourselves justice,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all want to put in a good show on a stage like that and produce the kind of performance that we have been doing in the league on a regular basis, not shying away from it just because it\u2019s against a Premier League side. It\u2019s a one-off and you have to make the most of those opportunities in your career.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve done well in the league so far, but we\u2019re always trying to improve and a game like this is a good chance to show how we\u2019ve done that.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut, as much as it will be a test to see how far we\u2019ve come, it\u2019s also a game we\u2019ll be going there to win.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s strange because after being in the lower leagues for a while there\u2019s been a cup feel to quite a few of the games this year,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve played a lot of teams that have dropped down from the Premiership very recently so we\u2019ve been able to experience those fairly big occasions all season.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is obviously different because Portsmouth are such a good team with international class players.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I think having a game like this will do us a favour when it comes to getting back into the league. Sometimes the league can get on top of you with games coming thick and fast on a Saturday, Tuesday, Saturday.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo to take on a fresh challenge will be good for us all.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can all taste a different kind of pressure and then, after putting the league aside for a week, we can all get stuck back in to what is an important part of the season for us.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Swansea City midfielder is an Arsenal fan and will come face to face with one of his heroes this weekend when he comes up against Tony Adams and his Portsmouth side in the FA Cup. The Swans travel to face the holders looking to end their reign as cup holders and Pratley admits that […]<\/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-15969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15969","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=15969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15969\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}