The Sentinel

By getting on backs of players, fans can actually inspire them

- Simon Lowe

WELL, that was drab, dull and uninspirin­g. For almost the entire 90 minutes, despite taking three points. It was the 58th minute that saw the game get genuinely interestin­g – albeit for a mere 90 seconds. Stoke had a free-kick on the left flank about 15 yards inside their own half. Erik Pieters was on the ball and everyone bar Jack Butland was ahead of him. Hardly anyone showed for the ball. Pieters hesitated once, twice and then passed short to Sam Clucas, who was surrounded by opposition players and so had no option but to play it back to the keeper. The crowd in the lower reaches of the Franklyn Stand were not happy. In their view Pieters had played yet another pointless pass into a heavily marked player. They voiced their disquiet as vocally as I’ve ever heard in that area (I have sat there as a season ticket holder for over 15 years now). Normally you just get a tut, a shrug of the shoulders or, when it’s really bad, a swathe of people voting with their feet and leaving early if things are going badly. It takes something really significan­t to raise a voice or two normally. But this was different. This mass protest was about the team’s overarchin­g mentality, which we’ve seen for several years now crumbling from that which won and kept us our proud place at football’s top table. It wasn’t about Pieters’ poor choice of pass; it was the fact that he had been given no option other than to play it to the one man who showed, or pass it himself back to Butland (which would have really got the natives restless) or simply lump it forward towards the ineffectiv­e Afobe, who had been as anonymous as the invisible man all afternoon. What was interestin­g was the reaction to this otherwise pretty non-descript turn of events. The crowd were vehement in their displeasur­e. Pieters took it personally and turned to face them down, standing stock still and eyeing up the gallery as if picking which one of us to shoot first. That then sparked his manager to turn around from his position on the touchline and stare down the denizens of the Franklyn lower too. They got their dander up even more and some words were exchanged between the Gary Rowett and supporters sitting near the bench. Clearly riled, Pieters then received the ball about 30 seconds later and went on a run up the left touchline, making the kind of progress the supporters had been whingeing so avidly about. He’d barely made a decent forward foray in the preceding 50 minutes or so. Now, after being bombarded with a hail of boos he was out to show us we were wrong. Fair play to him, Erik drove forward, exchanged passes with Clucas and raced into the box, picking out a lovely inside ball to the onrushing Joe Allen, who hit it instinctiv­ely and first time into the bottom far corner. It was a cracking goal. But, much like Tom Ince’s opener in first half injury-time, as well-worked and incisive as it was, it bore no resemblanc­e to the utter dross which we had to endure for the rest of the game. Having played such a pivotal role in creating that goal Pieters then ran back down the touchline giving it large to the fans, who, as far as he was concerned were now being utterly two-faced and cheering his contributi­on to the clinching goal. Rowett too, enjoyed pointing out that going backwards had led to the goal. But both missed the point. They mistook the disquiet for being specifical­ly related to that one instance of negativity. It wasn’t. It was about the last three years and if we were being at all specific it was about the mindset which has seen the most expensivel­y assembled squad in the Championsh­ip and pre-season favourites underperfo­rm and underwhelm on a regular basis. What can we learn from this microcosm of our season? The immediate aftermath showed that simply, by getting on our players’ backs, we can actually inspire them by riling them. To be honest, being nice and supportive hasn’t really worked in recent years, so perhaps a bit more in the way of petulant and reactive vitriol tumbling down from the stands can help them out of their torpor. That it has come to this is our wider learning point. Supporter action has been a huge focus and rightly so this week. The appalling incidents at Vale Park on Tuesday need no more comment other than I hope everyone who caused damage is caught, punished and made to pay for the damage.

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