Sheffield Wednesday: Garry Monk discusses the prospect of adding to his backroom staff

Monk has made a bright start to life at Hillsborough, overseeing three victories from five Championship matches to lead Wednesday up to eighth in the table.

The former Swansea City defender, who takes his Owls side to Cardiff City on Friday, October 18, after the international break, replaced caretaker manager Lee Bullen at the end of last month.

Bullen stayed on to assist Monk along with coach Neil Thompson and goalkeeping coach Nicky Weaver.

Monk told The Star: "The staff here have been fantastic. They have been really supportive.

"It is not easy for them to take on my ideas and methods but we have all worked really hard; harder than the players. We spend a lot more hours at the training ground going through certain things.

"Bully, Thommo, Nicky and the rest of the guys have been fantastic."

Despite being heavily linked with Birmingham City first-team coach James Beattie and analyst Ryan Needs in recent weeks, Monk has yet to add to his coaching team. The 40-year-old worked closely with Beattie and Needs at previous clubs Swansea City, Leeds United, Middlesbrough and Birmingham City.

"If I get the opportunity to bring in some staff that I think are needed in certain areas to strengthen us, then of course I will do that," insisted Monk. "But, at this moment in time, it is what it is.

"I am just concentrating on the staff and the players that we have here right now and that is all we can do."

Former Sheffield United striker Beattie has not been taking on-field warm-ups during match days for several weeks with the Blues while more recently Needs has not been in his usual place with the match-day analysts.

Instead, Birmingham chief Pep Clotet has turned to assistant Paco Herrera, player coach Craig Gardner and compatriot Xavi Calm who was initially brought in to work with the Under 23s.

Asked about Beattie and Needs' situation, Clotet said: "These are individual decisions that they make individually, if they don’t want to work for this football club and they want to work for another football club - they need to be addressed.

"In this sense I am always very loyal to clubs and I commit myself one hundred per cent with clubs until the situation changes.

"For me that is a mentality in the game.

"We have a really good staff in this club, a really good group of players, everyone committed and supporting the club to go forward and that’s the only thing we focus (on)."

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