Swansea manager Garry Monk believes that Chelsea’s pre-season form has nothing to do with Saturday’s match between the two, according to BT Sport.
“It doesn’t mean anything,” the Englishman said. “Man United won every single game in pre-season last year and we won at Old Trafford on the opening day.”
Monk took an extremely realistic approach towards judging Chelsea’s poor pre-season performance:
“It’s very difficult to read into pre-season games as teams are experimenting, organising and preparing. When you come into Premier League games it’s a totally different animal. Players think differently and the approach and intensity is different, so we will prepare for the best Chelsea side and hopefully put on a good performance.”
The Swansea boss is aware of the fact that Chelsea are still an extremely strong side that will be hard to do much against, especially on match day one of the new Premier League season. While Monk did lead the Swans to a successful eighth place finish last term, they didn’t get any points from Chelsea.
“Down there we were excellent for 45 minutes last season and if we can produce 90 minutes like that it will be great,” Monk said in regards to the first half of their match at Stamford Bridge earlier in the season. The visitors played impressively in the first half, but in the end Diego Costa was too much for them to handle as Chelsea ran out 4-2 victors. In the return leg at Liberty Stadium, The Swans embarrassingly conceded five in yet another loss.
Garry Monk knows that beginning the new season against the champions will not be an easy task:
“It doesn’t come any tougher than starting at the home of the champions and they’ve set the standard. They’ve kept the squad together and added a few to it, and the way they won the league comfortably towards the end was testament to how good they were.”
Monk has ensured that his team will not underestimate Chelsea despite their shockingly poor pre-season. The new Premier League campaign will kick off for the two sides at 5:30 pm on Saturday 8th August.
