THE WAY I SEE IT Stoke boss O’neill will be firming up his plans for big push next season
NEW ITV DRAMA GRACE IS BASED ON THE HIT NOVELS STARS JOHN SIMM
THAT gap to the top six season.means that Michael O’neill can already be looking down his squad list having a good think about next There will be a dozen or so players with a tick and a few with a circle around their tick who will be the bankers to take the team forward.
And there will be some with crosses.
You could tell just by the minutes that players spent on the pitch in the first half of the season that their futures lay away. Liam Lindsay hadn’t got on the pitch at all, Tom Ince and Lee Gregory the same.
It’s the same now, particularly with it having been a difficult winter. Players who have been fit but haven’t taken a chance to get in a team which has been struggling for form, well… the numbers tell a story.
It’s only been five starts for Sam Vokes, eight for Jordan Cousins. They can probably be added to the big group of senior players out on loan who will be looking for new homes in the summer.
It is a matter of trust and showing you can consistently deliver what the manager and coaching staff demand. If you don’t take your chance, you’d better take the next one else you’re out, first of the team and then the picture.
There are solid players and characters in the squad who are big parts of O’neill’s structure.
The trick will be to get replacements coming through underneath for James Chester, John Obi Mikel and Steven Fletcher; similar players in style who can take over the baton, some more urgently than others.
It fell apart for Stoke when they didn’t do that with Begovic-huthwhelan-walters-crouch, they have to make sure they get it right going the other way back up.
Finding a Fletcher-alternative will be perhaps the biggest task of the summer transfer window. The team has had to change shape this season if and when he hasn’t been fit and that has a big knock-on effect.
At the back you can see hopefully that Harry Souttar is stepping up to replace Ryan Shawcross and, gradually, Nathan Collins will take the place of Chester. They have been given a chance and they are showing their potential.
The goalkeeper situation will need solving. One will have to go from the three who are competing. A loan move for Joe Bursik? Or will he be promoted to number one?
The full-back positions have been in flux so that will be an area to sort and in central midfield you hope that there will be someone coming in or through for that holding position ready to inherit the role from Mikel.
Mikel and Joe Allen will be better in that central area with better players around the rest of the team. Too often they can be dragged into daft positions because they are covering teammates – and there have been continuous changes around them for various reasons.
You need a solid Glenn Whelantype who is happy in front of the centre-backs, knowing how to fill spaces and stopping the ball going into dangerous areas, knowing when to mark and when to pass players on.
It’s the mirror image of the job Nick Powell does in the other half; a Teddy Sheringham-type player who is clever in creating gaps and exploiting them to move the ball between the lines.
You look at the wide areas and where supply is going to come from. Is he going to keep Mcclean, who has only made 17 starts this season, largely due to injuries? We don’t know much about Alfie Doughty yet. Is he going to be ready to burst through?
On the right, how long will it take Tyrese Campbell to be back and firing? There are, it’s clear, a lot of questions to be answered and Stoke have to answer them in a limited time.
Until the window opens, the aim will be to finish as high as possible. The higher the finish, the higher you can set your expectations for next season. Keep chipping away, starting with a win over Middlesbrough and Neil Warnock which would put an extra spring in everyone’s step.
IGRACE Tomorrow, ITV, 8pm
T’S a big responsibility to bring a beloved detective to life. And the next popular literary character coming to our screens is hard-working, Brighton-based police officer Roy Grace.
Adapted from Peter James’ international bestseller, Dead Simple, new ITV production Grace, is written by Endeavour creator Russell Lewis, and stars John Simm, 50, in the title role.
Calling it a “delicate balancing act”, the actor tried not to worry too much about what avid readers of the books would think of his performance.
“While we’re trying to be absolutely true to the source material, it’s a TV show, and so some fans of the novel will be up in arms because it won’t be the characters they had in their head,” acknowledges the Yorkshireman, during a Zoom Q&A.
“But there’s nothing we, as actors, can do about that. We just have to serve the script and what’s in front of us.”
Here, John and his co-star, Richie Campbell, discuss what to expect from the two-hour film.
SETTING THE SCENE
The drama opens with Grace’s career at rock bottom. He has been reprimanded because of his unorthodox approach to his work, which has led to him being seconded to looking at cold cases.
There’s also the fact that his beloved wife Sandy has gone missing, which he is unable to move on from.
Meanwhile, colleague, Detective Sergeant Glenn Branson (played by Richie), has moved up the ranks – and asks Grace for help on a case involving a stag night prank which has apparently gone wrong.
The groom has gone missing three days before his wedding, and there are suspicions that something more sinister is going on. But then Grace becomes uncomfortably close to the bride-to-be.
Discussing his character’s strange work methods, John – who is known for TV series such as Life On Mars, and films like Human Traffic – says: “He just wants to get the result – that’s it. He doesn’t care about what people think.
“But, having said that, he’s not a maverick or anything. He’s just a really, really good police officer.”
DEVELOPING THE CHARACTERS
Branson, meanwhile, is dealing with getting his work/family balance right, which Londoner Richie, 38, notes is something a lot of people can relate to.
“He wants his kids to be proud of him, he’s gone into the police force to do something where they could be proud; at the same time, it’s alienating him from his family,” he elaborates when discussing the appeal of the character.
“So, for me, it was those human elements in it – and also the relationship between Branson and Grace. It’s kind of harking back to the whole buddy cop kind of thing.
“You know, they love each other, they hate each other, they’re best of friends and there’s also an age gap.
“So there are different elements going on there.”
The chemistry between Grace and Branson is an undeniably important part of the story.
But Richie – who was recently seen in Sir Steve Mcqueen’s BBC series Small Axe – wasn’t too concerned whether he and John would be able to get that right on screen.
“I just wanted to make sure that he was on the same wavelength that I was on, in terms of how we were going to create the warmth of the two characters, which is in the book, and it’s in the script.
“And, to be honest, it just kind of happened naturally from day one.”
LIFE ON SET
As one of the first productions to come back after the first Covid-19 lockdown, there were challenges as they got used to a new way of filming.
“We were rehearsing in the masks and you can’t hear anything – all these kind of things we’re thinking are going to slow us down,” says Richie, who’s also starred in The Frankenstein Chronicles and Top Boy.
“But, actually, you just take it on board and get on with it.”
He continues: “If anything, I think it’s allowed us to be a bit more insightful, in terms of what we’re actually doing, because everyone’s kind of listening in keenly and trying to figure out things and everything was so specific in where we are, it’s allowed us to really hone in and tell these stories.”
With Brighton such a key element in Grace, it’s brilliant to see that, even during a pandemic, the cast and crew were able to bring the seafront location to life so vividly – and
also show screen.
“Nobody wants to see anything about Covid,” reflects John.
“It was the most depressingly boring year, and we don’t want to see it again on film, I don’t think. And it really ages it and puts it in a specific year and that’s not what it [Grace] is about.
“It was really wonderful to see the nightclub scenes. It was like it was from a different planet: ‘I remember that!”’ some
normality
FUTURE COLLABORATIONS
on
A second Grace film – Looking Good Dead, directed by Julia Ford – will air on ITV later this year.
And who knows what else is in the pipeline? Peter James has written 17 fast-paced and gripping Roy Grace novels (the last of which – Find Them Dead – spent seven weeks at number one in 2020).
With that in mind, playing these characters could keep John and Richie in work for the rest of their lives.
Peter has even said that, when he’s writing Roy Grace now, he thinks of John, which the star says is “a real honour”.
“That’s really odd, as well, because I’m so into these books, I’m so into this character, that I don’t think of me when I’m reading it,” adds John.
“But, yeah, it’s incredible, and we all hope – all of us do – that we get to do more, and we get to do all these 17 books because there’s plenty of source material and it’s all really, really high quality. “Fingers crossed.” Richie certainly seems keen to continue to keep playing Branson, too.
“I think that’s what John and I both said that we’re looking forward to, is really kind of building these characters, and just creating more around them,” he follows.
“It doesn’t feel like the kind of the show where we come and spurt out detective talk and then walk off. It feels very real and grounded. And I think a lot of people would die to be a part of that.”
Nobody wants to see anything about Covid John Simm makes it clear the pandemic won’t feature in Grace