SCARS CAN SOON BE HEALED!
LET’S get this right. At no point is a run of three successive defeats acceptable - even if they feature two of the toughest away trips of the season and the visit of the unbeaten leaders.
But that failure doesn’t end Stoke’s season, or mean that Michael O’neill has suddenly turned into a terrible manager, as some would have it.
After all, in O’neill’s first 100 games he has won over 40% and lost just one-third of them, including that emergency first half-season rescue effort in which we lost 11 of those 33 games.
Yes this last week has been annoying, frustrating and, for those who made the long trip to south east London, a terrible way to end a good day out. But really we have to look beneath the Stoke City bonnet a bit more to understand where the club is at right now.
Not just rant about how ‘O’neill must go’ as a kneejerk to what is undoubtedly a poor run of form.
The manager has worked miracles in so many different ways both on and off the pitch, but the squad he has, whilst vastly improved and motivated, has its weaknesses. For example, the late switch around made necessary by Tommy Smith’s illness saw Ben Wilmot shifted out to right wing-back as cover and Leo Ostigard moved into the right centre-half position. This really highlighted how important Wilmot is there, how he is nothing more of a stopgap covering for Smith and how we are therefore weak in that position too. Personally I thought Demeaco Duhaney did well in his two appearances thus far. Clearly, O’neill, above, preferred more major surgery for the game which was just minutes away. Dovetail that with not having a specialist left-sided centre-half (and don’t get me wrong, James Chester has done well there at times) and the defence which opened up like the Dead Sea before Moses to concede effectively the same goal twice as Millwall became the second consecutive home team to turn a 0-1 deficit into a 2-1 victory is not that which started the season so well with a string of solid performances and clean sheets. O’neill has a good defence there when at least Souttar, Willmot, Smith and Tymon are fit, plus one other, and if he is to persist with the three at the back, they also need to have more of a balanced and settled midfield in front of them.
Back on Tuesday night, O’neill’s biggest team selection dilemma seemed to be how he was going to fit the newly-recovered Tyrese Campbell into the Stoke team alongside Nick Powell.
Sadly, Powell’s fractured fibula means that problem is no longer one which will tax O’neill, at least until January. But Stoke still have plenty of creativity in their squad and need to mix up the right blend for the right opponent. But the team and management also need to manage games better, making changes as the scenario dictates. That really seems to be a fair criticism of the manager and his staff at the moment. They are reacting too late, too often.
None of this means O’neill should be immune from criticism, but one of the things I like about him is his honesty in interviews about where the failures that we can often all too clearly see lie.
Having said all that, City also need to get some decisions when they are due and the early foul on Sam Surridge was as clear a penalty as you like, as replays prove. But referee Andy Davies, who was of course the man in black who gave Watford that ghost goal when Angus Gunn was barged over the line last season, failed to see the blindingly obvious.
Having said that, City’s run of penalty failure is almost as shocking as their results in London – that is now 32 games since Stoke won in the capital – so being given a spot-kick is no guarantee of success.
Millwall has been the graveyard of many a Stoke team and manager in the past. One only has to think of that abject 0-2 defeat in dismal conditions which finally ended Nathan Jones’ risible reign and the unmentionable ‘performance’ which saw 11-man Stoke lose 0-2 to the 9-man Lions in February 1999. That was a day so bad that Brian Little described it as the worst of his entire career.
That the Lions are managed by Gary Rowett who, by his own admission, failed at Stoke, but seems to fit his new club, as Jones does at Luton, only serves to rub salt into the three-defeat week wounds.
They may be raw, but those scars can be healed quickly as there are always games around the corner. First of all we have the visit of Premier League Brentford in the League Cup on Wednesday evening. What a fillip a good performance and running, what it is likely to be a changed Bees team, close will be.
Then, in the league, next up Stoke and O’neill face a game which now has become a must-win match; if such a thing can be said of a match this early in the season.
Cardiff have just sacked their manager Mick Mccarthy. They have lost their last eight games.
Surely that means the Potters are a shoo-in doesn’t it? This is Stoke, remember…