Arrogance of Potters laid bare
O’NEILL FACES TOUGH TASK
MICHAEL O’Neill is not the manager Stoke City wanted. But his appointment at least suggests the Potters are facing up to reality.
Speaking on talkSPORT this week, former Stoke midfielder Charlie Adam laid bare the dressing room issues that scuttled both Gary Rowett and Nathan Jones.
“It’s the mindset of the players,” said the Scot. “They think they’re above it all. But they’re not Premier League players any more. That’s gone. It’s like a disease that sets in and that’s what’s happening at the moment.”
As the events of last weekend prove, the virus has spread to the boardroom. The Potters’ attempts to lure Alex Neil from Preston were not just ineptly conducted. They were arrogant and deluded – the perfect metaphor for a club that has never fully accepted its relegation from the Premier League.
Jones’ sacking last Friday morning was clearly predicated on a misplaced belief that Neil was in the bag, presumably because his agent made a few positive noises.
Thereafter, the thought process of CEO Tony Scholes and the Stoke hierarchy is pretty apparent. How could anyone resist the pull of such a prestigious club, least of all the manager of a piddly little outfit like Preston? May as well leak the story and hurry things along.
But the Potters didn’t have the pulling power they imagined. When the news broke on Saturday lunchtime, Preston were furious and reported Stoke to the FA for an illegal approach.
By Saturday night, Neil had vowed to stay at Deepdale. It was a humiliating rejection – and not for the first time this season.
Having initially elected to sack Jones in late September, Stoke approached Chris Hughton. The former Newcastle and Brighton boss informed them he would prefer to wait for a Premier League job.
Poisonous
Maybe that’s true. More likely, the famously tactful Hughton was playing the diplomat.
We’ve all tried to pull someone out of our league only to be politely sent packing. Hughton knew perfectly well that Stoke are saddled with a dressing room that stinks like a sewage plant.
Adam spoke publicly of a disease in the camp, but Stoke’s problems are an open secret. One former associate of Jones told a colleague that some Potters’ players simply refused to train at the intensity the Welshman required, and that extra sessions were shunned.
Such tales abound, and are probably apocryphal. In all likelihood, the malaise at Stoke is the result of a subconscious dip by wealthy players with dwindling ambition, not a deliberate downing of tools.
Practically, though, it doesn’t matter. The word is out that Stoke is a poisoned chalice, a wrecker of managerial reputations.
Once linked with Premier League posts, Rowett has re-emerged at Millwall, one of the Championship’s smallest clubs. Jones was transformed from a bullish force of nature into a pale and penitent shell.
Why would Hughton risk his formidable reputation on that? Why would Neil swap the security and harmony of life at Deepdale – and a team flying high in the Championship – for a basket case in the basement? Because let’s face facts. Neil may have been tempted. The story did
not materialise out of thin air. But if the Scot had genuinely wanted to leave Lancashire, he would be gone by now.
No chairman, and certainly not the pragmatic Trevor Hemmings, would risk keeping a manager whose head and heart lay elsewhere.
Like the players on the pitch, the people running Stoke need to realise that they are not a Premier League club. They are a bad Championship club in dire need of reform.
The selection of O’Neill – highly accomplished as manager of Northern Ireland but untested in the EFL and easily attainable – is a step in the right direction.