O’NEILL NEEDS TO TAKE CREDIT FOR TURNAROUND
MICHAEL O’neill sent out exactly the right message when he said he wouldn’t be celebrating Stoke staying in the division.
Stoke got to the very brink of safety with that 1-1 draw at Bristol City on Wednesday but the manager wouldn’t have been opening the Champagne even if that Championship place had been mathematically certain.
Instead, his message was ‘we are Stoke City, we have to be aiming for better than managing to stay up in the Championship.’
He’s spot on, although that doesn’t change the fact he deserves recognition for the job he’s done since he took over in November with the team bottom of the league.
Stoke shouldn’t have been bottom with their squad but they were and O’neill has done a great job in his first season in the Championship.
In fact, he’d be entitled to be shouting from the rooftops about how he’s turned the team around over the last few months.
Instead, he seems pretty low key about his own record, not taking the credit he deserves.
You have to compare that to Jose Mourinho after Tottenham’s win at Newcastle this week. “Since I started we are fourth in the table,” he pointed out.
If I was at Stoke, O’neill’s comments would be music to my ears. Stoke were a Premier League club two years ago and at least have to be aiming to get back there.
Whenever a new manager comes in it is a gamble. But what I have seen of O’neill has really impressed me.
He was new to the Championship but while he’s been learning that, his man-management skills will have been as useful as they were while he was doing a fantastic job with Northern Ireland.
Talking of managers who have done a great job, I am so pleased for Gareth Ainsworth who has got Wycombe into the Championship.
Apparently they had the lowest budget in the league, and they could only just put a squad together at the start of the season.
But he manages like he plays, with no fear. He is the only winger I have ever played with who used to beat full-backs up, never mind the other way around. He was a bulldozer down that right-hand side. I saw some passing stats which showed Wycombe near the bottom over the season in League One.
That just shows that pass percentages don’t win you anything. People get carried away with all that. ‘Pass completion’ doesn’t mean you’ve got anywhere.
The stats that really matter are how many times you are getting in the box and how many chances you are creating. Some of the others are just fluff.
n IT’S remarkable that Port Vale fans have bought more than 1,700 season tickets when they don’t even know when the new season will start, or when they will be allowed in. Those sales are a measure of how that club is regarded now, a reflection of the work they have done through this difficult time in lockdown, and proof of how big a part of the community they are.
Through these difficult times I am sure supporters are looking forward to when they can get back to Vale Park to cheer on their team.
In the meantime, to get so many sales is a real endorsement of the club. It says a lot about how fans feel about what’s happening on the pitch as well. Under John Askey, backed by the new ownership, Vale really progressed last season and I am sure people want to be part of that in 2020/21.
But the football team is one part of it. There is a bigger picture about what the cub means to people in that part of the city. That’s not always been the case in the last few years. It’s not quite been at that level so it is great to see the Vale on the up once more.