Premier League: Garry Monk proud of Swansea's defensive display in 1-0 win over Burnley
Saturday 23 August 2014 18:38, UK
Swansea City boss Garry Monk was proud of his side's defensive display as they held off Burnley to secure a 1-0 win at the Liberty Stadium.
The hosts enjoyed the better of the opening 45 minutes as Nathan Dyer raced free to fire them into a 23rd-minute lead, while Wilfried Bony had an earlier header cleared off the line and Gylfi Sigurdsson was denied by Tom Heaton.
Swansea took a slender lead into the break after Lukas Jutkiewicz and Danny Ings had threatened for Sean Dyche’s men, but the second half saw them come under waves of pressure with Jutkiewicz and David Jones both spurning glorious opportunities.
The Swans managed to hold on to make it two wins from their opening two Premier League games this season and Monk was pleased to see his side come through a tough test in front of 20,565 fans.
Monk told Sky Sports: "It was a very competitive, extremely tough game. Credit to Burnley, I thought they were very good, especially in the second half.
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"First half we pretty much controlled the game, got our goal and we're looking to add a second one to it which we didn’t quite do.
"Second half, we talked at half-time about how much Burnley would come out and throw caution to the wind and throw everything at us.
"That's where we showed a great side to ourselves where we weren’t so fluent, we didn't pass the ball as well as we could but we defended very, very well.
"I thought the boys – all credit to them – they deserved that result in the end just because of the sheer work that they put in."
Swansea found themselves penned inside their own half for large parts of the second period and Monk was keen to hail his side’s resilience.
"When you don’t take those chances and get yourselves a little bit further away, especially in this league, you always leave yourself open to a goal coming back," he said.
"But overall, we limited Burnley to one shot on target in the whole game and we had some good chances ourselves.
"I thought the way we defended second half showed the type of attitude and character we've got at the club. When you suffer a little bit second half and you don't play as well as you can, you have to have that.
"We showed last week how well we can play with the ball and defend. This week we showed first half how we can play with the ball and second half how well we can defend which is great."
