Jones fears for his job at Stoke
Stoke City manager Nathan Jones admitted last night that his side’s poor start to the season could cost him his job after his gamble in making six changes failed to stop Championship leaders Leeds United cruising to an easy win – but he laid the responsibility at the feet of his players.
The former Luton Town manager followed his post-match rant in response to Tuesday’s 3-1 defeat at Preston by not only leaving out goalkeeper Jack Butland after two calamitous errors at Deepdale but taking out five other senior players in Joe Allen, Danny Batth, Tom Ince, Scott Hogan and Ryan Woods. He named 18-year-old defender Nathan Collins team captain.
It always looked like a reaction too far and so it proved as Leeds cruised to a fourth victory in five matches.
“There’s pressure on me,” Jones said. “I’ll front it out, I’m a brave manager. I believe we will turn it around – but the players have to take responsibility.
“When I first came here, we went to Brentford. I had the first alarm bell that it was a group that didn’t dig themselves out of stuff. It’s been here for a while. It cost a manager his job last season, it might cost me my job. It’s something that has to change.”
Asked about leaving out so many senior players, Jones responded: “We’ve won one cup game and drawn one League game. What’s the definition of madness? It’s doing the same thing and expecting different results.”
In Stoke’s mitigation, Marcelo Bielsa’s Leeds produced football that was at times sublime, mostly orchestrated by Pablo Hernandez, the 34-year-old former Spain midfielder who manages to stand out almost every week in a team not exactly short of talent.
The opening goal, in particular, was a thing of beauty, a sequence of single touches that tore through Stoke in the blink of an eye, launched by Adam Forshaw on the left. He fed the ball inside to Patrick Bamford, who laid it off to Hernandez to his left, who in turn released a diagonal pass out right, perfectly timed for Stuart Dallas to slip past James McClean on his blind side and slide the ball past Adam Federici.
“It was a pass that was very difficult to see,” Bielsa said. “It is not easy to see the pass but also not easy to make it.”
Hernandez, who has been so effective playing wide on the right in the opening games, was given a free role behind a front two. He seemed to need time to adjust, but not long enough to encourage Stoke, who achieved one objective by not conceding early in the first half, as has been their habit, but could not repeat the trick in the second as Leeds raced into a two-goal lead.
Bamford was allowed to make room for himself to cross after receiving Hernandez’s reverse pass and feeding the ball into the six-yard box, where Ezgjan Alioski, the Leeds left wing-back, stole in ahead of Stoke defender Tom Edwards to knock the ball home.
The home side’s morale looked crushed now, trying to salvage something to the sound of 3,000 Leeds fans taunting their manager, and Leeds sensed a team there for the taking. Jones sent on Hogan, Ince and Allen, but it was too late to make a difference.
Soon, another piece of outstanding vision from Hernandez released the ball to Alioski, on another surge down the left.
The Macedonian bore down on Federici and though his shot was beaten out by the goalkeeper, Bamford had arrived to hook the rebound into the net.