Potters’ season is done but boss will want flying finish
IDON’T think anyone would have considered that in the second week of March Stoke City’s season would be drifting. No-one would have thought that what they were trying to achieve this season would have gone with 10 matches of the campaign remaining.
You could possibly have felt that they might be a few points off the top six at this stage and have plenty to play for heading in to the business end of the season.
But a look at the Championship table tells a different tale. Stoke are 11th, 13 points off the play-off spots.
To break in to the top six now would need them to go unbeaten for the rest of their matches and pick up mostly wins as well.
It’s not going to happen. Boss Michael O’neill is now in one of those difficult situations as a manager.
It can be tough to motivate the players when there little to play for in the remainder of the season.
But he’ll have to find a way, as well as looking at what the summer may hold in store in terms of tweaking his squad.
Therein lies a problem. Michael will no doubt be backed by the board - after all they’ve backed previous managers - but he’s hamstrung by the fact only one player is out of contract in the summer.
And throw in Financial Fair Play plus a host of players out on loan - and it’s going to be a tough gig for Michael to make all of the changes he might want to.
It must be frustrating. He’s in a job where he’s saddled with players on long contracts and despite his best efforts he can’t get rid of all of the ones he may wish to - at least on a permanent basis.
It’s no surprise. If a player isn’t doing the business for you, there’s hardly going to be a queue of clubs for their services... or their wage demands.
People keep saying it’s a project at Stoke. I don’t buy that.
There’s no such things as projects in football. You can’t say it’s a two or three-year process.
Football is about being lucky, and by that I mean getting players together to gel and display the right characteristics to make you a winning team.
You can’t say ‘well, we’ll be looking to have a promotion push in two years.’
You get the results on the pitch and to do that you need plenty of characters. Sadly, they are largely lacking in today’s game.
We have players on fat contracts and that’s not going to change.
But it doesn’t help a manager. I think back to the Stoke side which won the League Cup in 1972 and they were never financially rewarded like today’s players.
They did it for the club and the city in general, but those days are never going to come back.
So what does Michael do for the rest of the season?
Well, he could throw in a few youngsters to see how they get on, but once again, you don’t have that conveyer belt coming through.
The Manchester United Class of ‘92 were always going to be stars because of the upbringing they had with Sir Alex Ferguson.
But these days clubs are lucky if one comes through the Academy to be a regular, two is a brilliant. If you get three, you’ve swum the Channel.
Michael will want to gain some momentum before the end of the season, but he will still be scratching his head about why Stoke have been inconsistent this season.
And even more so when you look at Barnsley. They stayed up on the final day of last season and are now hunting promotion through the play-offs.
For me, they are the Championship team for the season.
▶ I WAS delighted that Sheffield United were tonked 5-0 by Leicester City on Sunday.
Pleased because in a way it showed what a good job Chris Wilder, right, had done before they sacked him ahead of the game.
Wilder took over the Blades when they were in League One and guided them to the Premier League.
They finished in the top half last season, but this one has been a struggle.
But you can’t take away the job he did there and it’s a shame that he’s no longer at Bramall Lane.
He was Kevin Mccabe’s man and vice-versa, but once the new owner from the Middle East came in, you can imagine what was going to happen. It’s disappointing that Chris has gone, but he can hold his head high that he did a great job.