‘IT’S ALL ABOUT THOSE Fine MARGINS’

Potters manager O’neill admits his side are falling just the wrong side of the line when it matters

MICHAEL O’neill is pointing to the all-important fine margins - or magic player - that have been the difference as Stoke City try to pit themselves against the best in the Championship.

Stoke took a first-minute lead at Brentford on Saturday through Jacob Brown but a good strike from Vitaly Janelt and Ivan Toney’s 25th goal of the season turned the fixture around in the second half.

The defeat puts Stoke 10th, with five of their seven defeats against the top six having been by a onegoal margin in tight encounters, compared to winning two and drawing one.

O’neill said: “We’re gaining more experience at the top end of this league, which is important, but it’s having that extra little bit to win these games and unfortunately that has been the frustrating thing for us.

“Games are often decided by the quality of the striker that you have or just moments that even in games when we’ve been equally as competitive as the opposition, we’ve just come up a little bit short.”

“We were disappointed with how we played (at Barnsley) but I expected what I got (in response), I didn’t expect anything less than that. The disappointing thing for us is that we got ourselves in a place where we don’t want to end up with nothing to play for.

“We still have to look to progress. We didn’t anticipate that we would get promotion this year. We wanted to see if we could challenge for the top six and that’s what we’re ultimately trying to do.

“I think at this minute the squad is a little bit thin with the injuries that we have but in these games, particularly in these games, as well as we’ve competed against the teams who are above us, we’ve just come up a little bit short. The results have been narrow defeats, apart from Norwich away.”

Stoke hope Steven Fletcher (groin) will be fit enough to be considered against Swansea at home on Wednesday, but Sam Clucas has undergone surgery on a double hernia that will keep him out ‘for the foreseeable future’ and James Mcclean is in an air boot nursing a foot injury that will sideline him for four to six weeks.

Rabbi Matondo hopes to return to training but Morgan Fox (hamstring), Nathan Collins (foot) and Tyrese Campbell (knee) are long-term problems.

O’neill said: “We were missing Steven Fletcher. We’ve had him sporadically this season and in this league you need someone who’s going to get into double figures and get the high figures. That’ll be a big plus if you have that.

“They’ve done a great job at Brentford because they’ve replaced one with another.

“That in itself is testament to Brentford as a club that they’ve been able to deal with the loss of Ollie Watkins, replace him with Toney and be where they are in the league.”

Stoke have had a couple of spells this season when they have been rocked by the sheer volume of injuries to first team starters.

“It’s very difficult to really assess (why) at this minute in time in mid-season,” said O’neill. “We’ve very rarely had players injured in training, for example.

“The players we’ve had injured have been in games. It’s not been in training because the training we do has been so minimal because of the frequency of the games.

“James has been playing with this injury for a number of months, Sam Clucas has been playing with a hernia. The likes of Morgan Fox, Tyrese, Nathan, Adam Davies have all picked up injuries as a result of not a bad challenge but a challenge or how the player has landed.

“I think maybe we’ve been a little bit unfortunate that way that we’ve lost players.”