Not long ago Garry Monk was being touted as a possible England manager. It is strange how much can change in a year, a peripatetic period for Monk bookended by Swansea City’s highest league finish and his appointment as the seventh head coach of Leeds United since the spring of 2014.

Swansea City and Leeds form a curious juxtaposition. One has gone from obscurity and the brink of financial ruin to Premier League stability as the other has taken a darker path. Yet Monk, who played an integral role in Swansea’s ascent as a player before being sacked as the club’s manager last season after 11 matches, saw an opportunity at Elland Road where others viewed only trouble.

When the call came from Massimo Cellino, the Leeds owner, Monk had been five months out of work, analysing and refining his approach to management, visiting Sevilla and their former coach Unai Emery, while also meeting other sporting figures to share expertise. There was a desire to learn from his time at Swansea, to understand how and why things went wrong and to reinforce what went well.

In the meantime Leeds toiled in the Championship under Steve Evans, the fifth appointment of Cellino’s controversial reign since April 2014. Evans was called upon by the Italian in October and lasted in the job until the end of the season, remarkably becoming Cellino’s longest-serving manager in England, so Monk’s decision to take on a role that some in the lower leagues deemed unsuitable came as quite a surprise.

“I don’t focus on any of that,” says Monk of the limited shelf-life of recent Leeds managers. “I can honestly tell you that I don’t worry about that. If you worry about all of that, you’ll never take a job anywhere and I want to be challenged. It’s one of the biggest clubs in the country.

“Whichever situation you find yourself in, a manager will always be defined by his results. That’s the only time an owner will ever want to get involved, when the results aren’t right. That’s the same at every single club in every league across the world. I’m not thinking: ‘What would happen if I left the club and wasn’t told this or that?’ Who cares about that?”

For a club where rancour and regret have lived symbiotically in modern times, last season at Leeds hit new antagonistic lows. Some supporters’ enmity at Cellino’s running of the club resulted in dramatic protests: mock funerals were held before games and a series of images were beamed on to a stand at Elland Road calling on Cellino to sell the club.

The summer hiatus, like that of 2015, has cooled the controversy. All appears calm as Monk, who signed a one-year contract in June, oversees his first training session at Leeds’s ground and, while the sale of the young midfielder Lewis Cook to Bournemouth has caused some consternation among fans, the new head coach has called for a united front and increased togetherness before next Sunday’s opening league fixture at Queens Park Rangers.

“I remember coming here as a player and there was a siege mentality. I was on the pitch and it was incredible,” says Monk of playing against Leeds in League One when they were deducted 15 points in the 2007-08 season. “That’s the mentality we need to get, that same attitude of everyone in it together, the fans, the players, the staff, everyone at the club. It’s us against everyone else and we have to give our young squad the best opportunity to perform. The best way to do that is for everyone to be together.

“Whatever the opinions are, they haven’t got us anywhere in recent history. What do we do? Keep doing the same or try and change it. It isn’t just the fans. It’s everyone. It’s the staff, players, everyone’s mentality has to change. If we can pull together, no matter who makes a mistake or who doesn’t, that will give us the best chance as a club.

“I’d heard all the stories [about Cellino] like everyone else. But as soon as I’d met him and had discussions with him I was very impressed. The way he spoke, the ideas he has, the direct questions that I asked him and the answers that he gave, he was excellent. Speaking to him, he’s a very passionate man. One thing that can’t be denied is how passionate he is about this club.

“Every single owner, at every single club, they all want to know everything. They all want to be involved, they all want to have an understanding of what’s going on at their club. They have every right to know what’s going on from the bottom to the top. That’s football nowadays.

“It was nice to sit down and speak with someone who understands football. He’s been a chairman and owner for over 30 years so he knows a lot about football. He understood how I worked. It just felt right.”

That said, dealing with Cellino may be slightly different from handling Huw Jenkins, the Swansea chairman. Court cases, a Football League ban, a “pie-tax” ticket scandal; these are a selection of the issues that have followed the former Cagliari owner in West Yorkshire.



There have been signings as well as sales this summer. The highly rated Kemar Roofe has joined from Oxford United while Monk has turned to Swansea for other loan additions including the midfielder Matt Grimes and defender Kyle Bartley.

At 37 Monk is still in the fledgling stages of his managerial career but his thirst for knowledge and improvement is clear. At Leeds the allure of a famous history is never far from sight – notable recently when Johnny Giles attended a pre-season training session in Ireland – but Monk is keen to harness the club’s ambition rather than be burdened by it. “It was probably more difficult to manage at Swansea than it is being here,” he says. “I have a refined way of working in terms of what I do and I’m able to do it with a blank canvas.

“It’s a young and hungry group of players with huge potential and we are trying to build a culture within the club. I think the players see that and it’s important that the fans see that as well, then you can start to create something. That’s the only way you can get out of these leagues and get success, promotions. I felt that as a player and have seen that as a manager.”

Have his difficult experiences at Swansea helped? “Coming in here, I already feel a better manager,” Monk says. “But we all know that as a manager none of that will matter unless we get the results that are needed. We’re under no illusions. The challenge here is massive. But we’re going to do everything we can to try and get promoted.

“I’m not a manager that wants to go from club to club taking the easy route. I want to pick a big challenge in my career and this is one of them. It was an easy decision because of the challenge that it is.”