The Swansea City midfielder made his first Championship start for five months on Tuesday and his performance brought strong praise from his manager Brendan Rodgers.<\/p>\n
But as a local lad, Allen knows that there can be extra pressure on him to do well and that has led to frustrations on his part in the past.<\/p>\n
But he is now putting that behind him as he explained to the Western Mail “I realise I’m in the spotlight a little because I’m Welsh and a local lad<\/p>\n
“You play well for a game and there can be a lot of hype, which has been the same for any lad who’s come through the ranks.<\/p>\n
“It’s something you have to expect and also something you have to deal with.<\/p>\n
“It brings a pressure, but I’ve put a lot of pressure on myself in the past and I think that was my problem last year.<\/p>\n
“Now I’m trying to relax, enjoy my football and control my temper and frustrations a bit.<\/p>\n
“There will be disappointments but I have to stay positive and look to be playing as part of a successful team.<\/p>\n
“I’m still developing as a player and have a long way to go, but every season you have to improve. I’m confident I can do that this year – hopefully I can get the run of games I need that to show it.<\/p>\n
“What I need to be doing is playing one game and going straight into the next,” he says, aiming to keep his starting berth for Saturday’s clash with Scunthorpe.<\/p>\n
“Last year the injuries came one after the other so stringing games together didn’t happen for me.<\/p>\n
“But I’ve played a couple of games in quick succession for the U21s and then into these games for Swansea and I feel good.<\/p>\n
“I feel fitter than I did all of last year and it’s personally very important for me to get a run going.<\/p>\n
“There are a lot of good players fighting for every position on the pitch so it was important to first get a start – and now my focus and main task is to keep that spot.<\/p>\n
“Everything else will come after that.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Swansea City midfielder made his first Championship start for five months on Tuesday and his performance brought strong praise from his manager Brendan Rodgers. But as a local lad, Allen knows that there can be extra pressure on him to do well and that has led to frustrations on his part in the past. […]<\/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":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17565","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=17565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17565\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}