“Oh god not Macron!” we all cried, even I cried. Stoke fans have a habit of slating things before they are given a chance. Look at the hostility Hughes got when he got hired. I’m not riding my high horse here, I myself was critical of the news that we would wearing macron for the next five years. But they look smart and I am loving the attention we are getting from the Italian sports wear manufacture.
But what will happen in the next five years whilst wearing this continental thread? This season has been one of mixed emotions, whenever Stoke seem to take a step forward we take a step back days later. Be it injury or be it just poor form and bad decisions. The start of this season was a tough one we went six games with out a win, and it’s been six league matches since we last won. Should this really be the results of a team who have the European stars of Shaqiri and Bojan amongst their ranks?
Well they love to make my job easier don’t they? Today Stoke once again took the lead in a BPL game and once again they let it slip, not just to a draw but instead to a defeat. Over the first few weeks of After the Whistle I criticised Stoke for being inconsistent, I called for performances like those against the Manchester clubs from earlier in the season to be more frequent. Well now I can’t complain about consistency, because we’ve fallen into the trap of being consistently poor. There’s no two ways about it, we have been poor for the entirety of the second half of the season and our league form in representative of that. 1 win in our last 9 games, is that the form of a team who is made up of players who believe they should be playing European football? Not in my eyes, so let’s get this started.
Issue 1: Killing off a game
I brought this up last week and it annoys me that I have to talk about it again, but once again our team has failed to display the desire and finishing acumen to kill off a game when we take the lead.
I don’t have the exact figures but I know that about three or four weeks ago we overtook Manchester City as the team who have dropped the most points from winning positions. Given that since then we have dropped two points against Sunderland and Crystal Palace (A team who have only one once in 2016 prior to today) each, I can feel assured that we are top of that unwelcome table.
There were two golden opportunities in this game for us that weren’t taken, one would have put us in front and the other would have pulled us level with a few minutes to go. If you had those chances who would you want to put on the end of the ball? For many it would be Shaqiri and Arnautovic. Well they were the players who had those chances and we failed to score either. However I’m a little more forgiving in regards to Shaqiri’s chance because I think that it was more of a good save than it was a bad shot.
This is a serious issue that needs to be addressed in the summer, I don’t know how, but someone who gets paid to find solutions for these issues needs to do so.
An apology to players who are often at the wrong end of my criticism. As the old guard at Stoke reminded the new what is missing from their game, work rate.
Like many of us come 2 o’clock I was less than amused at Sparky’s team selection, I was glad to see the return of Pieters and Shaqiri; and believed Cameron was a good option to deal with Defoe’s pace. But, I was not happy with the selection of Mr. Crouch and Adam. In fact prior to the match I tweeted this:
What's the point of playing the potato and the bean sprout
referring to the physical make up of both of my not so favourite players. Yet I was left eating my words as one was awarded the man of the match award and the other certainly deserved it.
I’m struggling, I really am. It’s difficult to take a draw such as this, when it really does feel like a loss. As I always do in this article I’ll be looking at five issues from the match that has just taken place, however I want to start off by saying that for roughly 60 minutes (More on that later) today’s performance was much better than we have seen over the past 4 weeks. It would be unfair of me to only point out the issues and not recognise that fact.
So with that in mind, let’s get started shall we?
Issue 1: The omission of Bojan
Now hold your knives and pitchforks, when the team sheet went up I (Along with nearly everyone else) slated Hughes for the inclusion of Peter Crouch over Joselu or Diouf, and Charlie Adam over what appeared to be Bojan (Given how the team was pictured by the Stoke City twitter page). However I’m not going to be ignorant enough to say that Crouch and Adam didn’t have a good game, in fact they were probably our best players on the pitch (Only beating out Arnie due to the fact they were on for longer). So no, I don’t think Bojan should have been have been ahead of either of these players (Not with hindsight anyway). It is instead Imbula who I feel should have been dropped.
It hasn’t been uncommon throughout the season to see the occasional article linking Hughes with a move away from the Potteries in the summer to so-called “bigger clubs”, most notably a few linking him with Manchester United during the peak of our season. Now with the cluster of news outlets reporting a link between the Potters boss and a move to Everton, I figured it’d be a good time to look at three possible replacements for Hughes should he leave, just to reassure you that it wouldn’t be the end of our high hopes as a club.
David Moyes
My personal favourite from this list is ironically the man who (Arguably) made Everton the club they are today. When he first joined Everton in 2002 he took the club to 5th position in his first season, the first time they had been in the top half of the league since the 1995/6 season when they finished 6th.
What followed were 10 years of stellar performances from Everton football club under David Moyes, until he signed for Manchester United in 2013. The club only dropped out of the top 8 on two separate occasions (2003/4 and 2005/6), a record which Stoke fans should be absolutely jumping for.
In Brazil, football is a sport that almost all people love. With me it is no different, I love football. But my love for football is much greater than some game. I love beautiful football, flashy football. No doubt English football is one of the most beautiful and most exciting in the world. My love for Stoke is great, I love this team. But as I say, it is not easy to support Stoke in Brazil. We do not have support, information and much less publicly known. I know very few fans of Stoke City in Brazil. So it’s not easy to find information, trivia, facts, images, and video available. I’m not good at English (You may have noticed that), so it is quite hard to find the information I seek. It makes my love for Stoke no smaller, I love this club, so I go to the background behind content on my social profiles.
For our past seven halves of football we have conceded, on average, two goals per half, this is truly appalling form, especially for a team with such high targets of European football. Another concerning figure is that during this run starting from half time against Swansea to today we have only managed to score twice in over 5 hours of football. But after letting the anger/violence/depression these matches have caused ebb away I have been trying to think of some positives to take from these results.
Obviously there is nothing to take from some truly awful performances; the gigantic injury list has taken another star player with Afellay being ruled out for nine months with a snapped ACL; and there has been little sign that Mark Hughes is willing to make tactical changes to try and stop the rut. But one thing that the club can certainly take from these games, is how it has exposed some of the hidden frailties (some quite significant) that an average run to the end of the season would have left hidden, ready to hurt us at some point in the future.
Changing our stadium name; its not all doom and gloom. Stoke City’s announcement that confirmed the name change of the Britannia Stadium to the Bet365 Stadium as of August later this year has been widely criticised across social media. Understandably, the fans do not want to surrender the short history associated with the Britannia Stadium, but its worth remembering this;
There’s no embargo on the name ‘Britannia Stadium’. As far as the fans are concerned, you can call it whatever you like. Effectively the only place it will be referred to as the ‘Bet365 stadium’ is in official paperwork and broadcasts. As we saw with St James Park and The Sports Direct Arena, the decision has been made purely to benefit the club financially and not to upset the majority of its loyal fanbase.
Tottenham match? What Tottenham match? If like most Stokies you haven’t been able to wipe the last 225 minutes of football (second half Swansea to Monday’s dreadful performance) from your memory you will still have questions that need to be answered. In this period we have conceded 10 goals scoring only 1 in reply, yep it’s genuinely that bad, and there is a requirement for change. So what can we actually do prior to the end of the season to try and reclaim some decent form?
One suggestion is to change our playing style. Our stronger performances throughout this season have come playing a German style counter attack with the team sitting deep and hitting hard and fast in attack. This has been lost from the squad ever since we played Chelsea at Stamford Bridge where Hughes moved the back four much higher up the pitch in an effort to retain possession and pressure on the opposition’s midfield and defence.
Fan-favourite and general all round legend Jon Walters has built up a bit of a reputation as a funny-man for his antics on Twitter. Here are some of his best bits since he first manned the social media banter-cannon back in February 2015.
Having had a really good think about it I’m still not sure…
