CITY LEFT WONDERING WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN...
THREE big incidents to bookmark Stoke City’s eighth goalless draw of the season – and three big moments when they might have won it.
First up, Christian Norton was appealing for a penalty when Jordan Storey pushed his back early on.
Steven Fletcher was even more adamant… but referee James Linington was unmoved.
Linington was unmoved again when Preston substitute Brad Potts lunged in and caught Nick Powell so high on his ankle that it was almost his thigh.
The referee didn’t only not show a red card, as Michael O’neill was sure it deserved, he didn’t even give Powell a free-kick when it seemed he had been in a decent position to see what had happened.
Third, there weren’t too many appeals when Harry Souttar was given his marching orders late on when Alan Browne made a good run from midfield into space, Souttar had ground to cover and got in his way just before he got into the box.
Browne probably should have done better but seemed to be content with winning a foul by turning into the 6ft 7in giant breathing down his neck and Adam Davies steaming out of goal towards him like a bright yellow lorry.
Yet still, Stoke might have won it.
Souttar had a brilliant chance at the other end when he leaped at the back post to meet Tommy Smith’s
outswinging corner midway through the second half.
He was a couple of foot above everyone when he made contact but his header bounced down the winged the wrong side of the post.
Steven Fletcher thought he had actually won it.
He steamed on to a brilliant cross from Nick Powell and crashed it in… but as has
become familiar, the offside flag went up.
Another marginal call for Fletcher.
“I think when you see it back, I’d love to have the eyesight of the linesman,” said O’neill. “It’s very, very marginal when you see it back. It looks like his left arm potentially is offside.
“His movement is brilliant
as he peels off the back and it’s a brilliant ball from Nick.
“It’s one of those that could easily have been given as a goal. The linesman possibly might not have seen his arm was offside. From the angle we saw it and from the camera angle that we’ve seen, it’s very, very marginal.
“As a striker I think you always have to try to nick
that extra half-yard and Fletch has that. He tries to pull off the centre-back.
“I look back at a similar goal he scored at Luton away, for example, earlier this season, the one he scored against Brentford at home. He will be aggrieved it didn’t count because we needed something like that to win the game.”
Stoke have been saying that a few times this season.
It was put to the manager, in fact, that barring the red card talking points and Norton penalty claim, he probably could have just pressed repeat on one of his earlier post-match interviews from one of the other goalless draws.
Good control at times but without perhaps the luck, quality or ruthlessness in the final third to turn 0-0 into 1-0.
Sub Jacob Brown had the last chance in injury-time when he did expertly to intercept a back pass and take it around the advancing keeper but the angle was narrow, defenders were recovering and he couldn’t finish it off.
“Yes, it’s frustrating,” he said. “I thought the first 15 minutes, we allowed ourselves to be nullified a little bit, both teams playing the same system.
“Once we started to switch the play a bit quicker we looked a good side but we still probably didn’t do it enough. Going into half-time I thought we were excellent and we get into should score but we don’t, we either pick a wrong pass or we don’t get across people in the box enough.
“I also thought it was a foul on Christian Norton. The defender pushes him in the back. It’s a poor decision from the defender with Christian on the byline and the referee missed that one as well.
“You need something at that point in time to give yourself a chance to go 1-0 up. We didn’t find it.
“In the second half, to be fair to Preston, they made it more difficult for us and we didn’t cause them enough problems with the decisions we made.
“We continued to play a bit in front of them, we didn’t turn the around.
“We brought Jacob on to give us that ability to get behind and he nearly did that at the end when intercepted a back pass and they did well to defend that.
“We got a little bit bogged down in the second half, we overcomplicated things a little bit and we were picked off at times.
“We lost the ball in some bad areas that allowed them to play the ball forward and we gave away some freekicks on the edge of the box that gave them a little bit of belief.
“We’re disappointed not to take more than one point.”
Preston were better in the second half than the first and did have their own couple of moments.
Ched Evans sent a header over, Andrew Hughes hit the post with a free-kick and Browne lost his head when he was sent through shortly after Souttar’s exit.
“In the end I thought it was a positive result,” said caretaker manager Frankie Mcavoy. “That’s a win, two draws and a defeat for us in the last four games.”
Stoke move on to Coventry at home in midweek having now already equalled last season’s points tally. It will be interesting to see how much they can beat it by.