10 YEARS ON
TONY PULIS REMEMBERS THAT GREAT DAY AT WEMBLEY
STOKE City might not be the only team in the Championship to make mistakes, but the last few days have shown they can be costly. Stoke shipped poor goals following a corner, slip, throw-in and rebounded free-kick against Millwall and Birmingham to end a run of three clean sheets when they barely looked like letting the other team have a shot, never mind conceding.
Potters manager Michael O’neill, with 19 clean sheets this season, can see progress but knows that needs to continue.
He said: “If I look back at last season, I think there were a lot more direct goalkeeping errors, for example, as opposed to what we’ve seen this season.
“We’ve had to deal with a change of three goalkeepers playing, which is always disruptive, and we’ve had a few goals in the back four which are avoidable, clearly.
“I think if you look at the Championship every week, if you watch the highlights, you will see a lot of goals that come from mistakes.
“That’s the nature of the league we’re in.
“Certainly from our point of view, those are things we need to get out of our game.
“Ultimately they have been the deciding factors in games. Even when I feel we’ve been the better team and not capitalised on that, we’ve lost or drawn because of an error.
“That’s something we have to get out of our make up.”
Stoke have conceded 12 goals in the last 15 minutes of matches this season and, with a couple of mistakes too, it was put to the manager if it was a lack of concentration.
“I don’t think it’s a case of that so much,” he said. “Possibly there is a bit of mental fatigue in there.
“Also there’s a situation with players where we’ve played a long season in a short period and errors have crept into games.
“They have been the things that have been decisive in terms of the results that we’ve had, particularly in the last couple of games.
“That’s something we need to address.
“Players come into the team and never intentionally make mistakes but that is part of the process for staying in the team.
“If you come into the team you have to make sure you don’t make mistakes and, if you do, that they’re not consequential in terms of the result.
“That’s part of the game that we have to iron out over the next five games and take into next season.”
There are things to be learnt from back-to-back losses in terms of the Stoke squad – but the squad will continue to be reviewed and evaluated over the next five games, regardless of results.
O’neill said: “You are learning about players all the time, some of it you like, some of it you don’t like.
“That’s part of the joy of being a football manager.
“I think the reaction has been good. Players have been good this week, they’ve trained well and they look ready to play.
“They’ve been in good form today and hopefully that will lend itself to a good performance against Preston.
“The aim is to gather as many points as we can in the last five games and then we’ll see where that takes us.
“Where we finish in the league will depend on the teams around us as well but our aim is to finish strongly.
“That was the aim before we lost two games so we will hopefully see a reaction to that.”
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