SORRY HOME RECORD NEEDS TO BE ADDRESSED TO BOOST STOKE CAUSE
STOKE City are just three points above the relegation zone after a 1-0 home defeat to Coventry. Here are the talking points from the bet365 Stadium...
STOKE’S DIRE HOME FORM This was far from the worst Stoke performance at home this season, players worked hard and they were clapped off at full-time – but the record at the bet365 Stadium absolutely stinks. It’s eight goals in 16 league games since the opening day.
To put it into perspective, Southampton have scored 39 from 15 home games in the same period, 13 teams in this division have scored over 20. Millwall is the next worst and they’ve scored about double (14).
Stoke have never scored so few in this many home matches. Even in the 16 home games up to the last day of 1984/85, what has always been considered the season beyond horrors, they scored 10. This is off the charts diabolical.
Credit to the supporters who sit through it all, plus the misery of last season, and are still backing the team. One day, runs like this will make success feel all the sweeter. That feels a long, long way away at the moment.
STOKE’S RECORD WITHOUT A
CLEAN SHEET
Every manager wants to keep more clean sheets and they don’t half help but they can’t be the be all and end all they are for Stoke. You can’t expect to keep a clean sheet in every match but Stoke have only won four times this season when they have conceded a goal. “Yeah, that’s obvious,” said Steven Schumacher. “But you guys keep saying all the time, we need to try to get a balance. We want to attack teams because that’s how you win but you’ve also got to be solid behind the ball. For 50-odd minutes we were relatively solid. Coventry had one chance when the ball bounced around but we had a couple of chances as well.
“So there wasn’t a lot in the game, but getting the balance right is the key for any successful team.”
THE MOVE TO A BACK THREE THEN A BACK FOUR AGAIN Schumacher won the League One title last season with Plymouth playing something like a 3-4-2-1 and he switched to 4-3-3 in pre-season. Now at Stoke he’s done the reverse and started with a back three in the last two matches, although he finished this one back with 4-3-3. It doesn’t sound like he is tying his colours to the mast just yet on a system being a definitive plan A. He said: “We knew the least two home games were going to be difficult because of circumstances so we decided to go a bit more solid and play a back five. We have been more solid, we’ve only conceded one goal in two games.
“But when we changed the 4-3-3 in the second half, we looked more threatening. We keep going, we just keep trying to pick the team with a formation that we think is going to win the next game.”
SIX CHANGES AND A NOTABLE
STARTING XI
No-one was quite expecting this many changes after a huge midweek win, even if it was at the end of a three-game week. Daniel Iversen (dead leg) and Luke Mcnally (thigh) were unavailable but four others dropped to the bench. This was such a big match and there’s a free week ahead. It meant that Stoke had no signings from overseas in the starting XI, which would have been long odds if you had weighed up the chances at the end of the summer transfer window. There were eight players starting who had been at Stoke last season although that still includes two of the 24 signings since the end of last term. So 19 of Stoke’s signings this season were not in the XI and two or three might get a run out for the under-21s on Monday.
If Stoke do stick with a 3-4-2-1, there will clearly be questions about making a winger a priority on deadline day but hopefully Million
Manhoef can force the issue by making himself undroppable. Schumacher insisted it will be a case of picking the right system for each game. It doesn’t matter how they get points, it’s just about getting points.