“I was training, not playing, going home and sleeping on the sofa because because I was living on my own as I wasn’t with my girlfriend at the time. “I was just in a lull of training and not playing, running on the weekends and it impacted my mental health so much. “I was stepping on the pitch, not feeling confident at all and I was thinking should I even be here? Should I be at a Premier League team? What am I going to do after this season because it has gone so badly? “That, coupled with thousands of people outside of football telling me I how bad I was, calling me all sorts of ridiculous things. “ To b o u n c e b a c k f r o m i t , without sounding c ynic al, I feel like alot of people need it to bounce back and to build c h a r a c t e r, n o t t h a t I w i s h people to go through that. “It’s so important, in this day and age, especially young players because they are subject to such a big scale of people watching and having their opinions. “Obviously everybody is entitled to their opinions, but you just have to know what the right ones are to take in. “Looking back now, it was a really good test for me if you like. “At Leeds, because I wasn’t playing, and when I was playing, I was playing poorly and then you get all the outside noise of you're not good enough.
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“But because you aren’t confident in yourself you start to believe that. “It was impor t ant for me to go to Northampton to get my confidence back. I wasn’t thinking about anyone else. I just needed to play games. “I went there, played games and unfortunately we got relegated, but for myself I scored a few goals and fell back in love with football really.” Graham Potter came in as manager the following s e a s o n . Yo u s t a r t e d o f f a s left-back with Martin Olsson away at the World C up, but were soon back in midfield and haven’t looked back. “I am a midfielder there's no doubt about that. I am no left-back , but I just wanted t o be involved and I almo st saw it as a way in. “I thought if I c ould do well at left-back, the manager will then trust me. Obviously, I presumed he knew (Graham Potter) I was a central midfielder, so I would end up there at some point. “As long as I was playing that was the most important thing. “He gave me my opportunity. I personally didn’t think that I would play for Swansea. I only played five games, so I was thinking I was going to move on. I ended up playing 50 games that season under him. “He believed in me, gave m e a n o p p o r t u n i t y, a n d I owe alot t o him for rev iv ing my Swans e a c are er. He was ver y influ entia l.”
