‘WE NEED TO BE CLINICAL AND CUT OUT THE COSTLY MISTAKES’
STOKE City are back at the bet365 Stadium to try to quickly start putting things right that have been too wrong for too long.
It’s Nathan Jones and Luton Town in the away changing room this evening and Alex Neil has been previewing the fixture.
STOKE REALLY NEED A WIN, IF POSSIBLE, TO LIFT EVERYONE’S SPIRITS?
Yes. Our home record has been poor, that’s been a talking point. I think that our performances have merited points we haven’t received really but at the end of the day we haven’t won the games so we want to put that right, we want to win the next three points.
I think we’re going to have to perform well and more importantly we need to be better in both boxes. We need to be more clinical.
The difficulty we have also got is when we make an error. In the last game, we make one error and the ball ends up in the back of the net. I think their goalkeeper passed the ball out short three times in the first half and we don’t punish them.
We need to be more clinical and stop errors - and if we do have errors, that there is always someone behind us who can make a repair for us or make a save or do something to prevent us from conceding. Unfortunately that’s not been the case.
WHAT WILL BE THE BIGGEST DIFFICULTIES LUTON MIGHT POSE TO STOKE?
They’ve got a really set way of playing. They’re really direct, they’ve got two really big, strong, powerful centreforwards - 6ft-plus. Carlton Morris
I had when he was a young kid at Norwich and I know him really well. They’ve got a style and way of play that they’re very good at. We need to make sure we compete in that respect, we need to make sure we’re competitive and match the physicality and then play our game and be effective at what we do.
DO YOU THINK THE PRESSURE IS GETTING LARGER FOR THE TEAM TO PERFORM GIVEN THE CLUB HASN’T BEEN WHERE FANS HAVE WANTED FOR FIVE OR SIX YEARS?
Yes, but that’s what comes with playing for a club like Stoke. If you’re not capable of handling that expectation and pressure then you’re at the wrong club, it’s as simple as that. The club shouldn’t lower its standards in terms of expectancy. We need to understand currently where we are and then we can plan to get to the next point.
But expectancy is something you want as a player. The last thing you want is to go somewhere as a manager, coach or player where no
one expects anything from you and if you win a couple of games people say, ‘Great.’
In my experience in my coaching life so far I think I have performed best at high expectation clubs. Norwich was high expectation, we had to get up; Sunderland was high expectation, we needed to get up. Those have been the types of places for me were up to this point I have arguably done my best work.
The expectancy here is nothing new for me. If anything I hope that over the course of time it proves to be a strong point rather than a negative.
IF YOU HAD YOUR CHANCE AGAIN WOULD YOU DO ANYTHING DIFFERENTLY IN HOW YOU SET UP FOR THE LAST GAME AND DO YOU THINK THE PLAYERS ARE UP FOR IT?
The players are up for it. If you look at goals we conceded, both of them are individual errors. Are there things I’d change in the game? Of course because when you lose a game there are always things you’d change.
I’m not the type of guy... in fact, I’m the opposite. I look at my performance first. There are certain elements I’d do differently but that’s with the benefit of hindsight. When we did get the goal, we rallied and could have potentially got another one. Again we made a couple of poor decisions in the final third when we got into really promising positions. I’ll always analyse the team and how we play and even when we win I’ll think we might have done something
different and improved that area. The simple fact is when you win, draw, loss it’s a collective. It can’t be down to the individual, it can’t be solely down to one player or one coach or whatever.
If we didn’t make individual errors we get a point out of the game but when we do make individual errors, can your mate bail you out? Can somebody get back and cover and make a tackle? Can you win a header when it’s vital? Can you make a save when you need to? At the moment they are the bits we have not done well enough.
But I think you could see the appetite and fight from players in the last game. I don’t think that was questioned, in my opinion. I thought the players fought until the last minute and it wasn’t enough on the day.
I’m not naive and we need to win some games but I’ll be honest with you. When you’ve managed as many games as I have now, the pressure externally is nowhere near the pressure I put on myself.
YOU MUST HAVE A SENSE NOW OF THOSE PLAYERS WHO WILL FIGHT TO THE DEATH OR THOSE WHO WILL BE GREAT ON A GOOD DAY BUT NOT BE SO GOOD ON A BAD DAY - DO YOU FEEL YOU’VE GOT THE PLAYERS TO GET STOKE OUT OF THIS MINI SLUMP?
Definitely. I know people will be sick of hearing this because they don’t care, they just want you to win - but I’ve got to analyse performances, that’s my job. The fact is, if we had been performing really, really poorly and losing it would be a bigger concern. If that was the case not only would I need to fix the mentality, I need to fix the process and how we play and then fix the result.
But at the moment I think if we can stop making silly decisions at crucial times of games we give ourselves a chance. At Wigan I didn’t think we made that many errors and we get the goal and win the game. Wigan, arguably, is the poorest we’ve played in the last six games and we win. We need to get to the point when we stop making stupid errors and then when that happens it will always give us a chance of getting results. Unfortunately at the moment we’ve done that far too often. Hopefully this time we’ll be in a better place, we’ll make better decisions and give ourselves a chance.
You’ve got to always have a mood of optimism as a coach. The last thing a player needs is a negative coach.
HOW HARD IS IT PERSONALLY ON SOME OCCASIONS TO LIFT EVERYONE FOR THE NEXT GAME?
Not even one bit if I’m brutally honest. I take a night to reflect on a game and I’m naturally frustrated, disappointed, angry sometimes depending on what I’ve seen but the minute that’s done I watch the game back, dissect it and what I need to take from it and the focus is on the next match.
You have to approach the next match with optimism and an expectancy and a hopefulness that we’re going to perform really well and win.
In terms of getting myself and the players up for the match, that wouldn’t even come into my head. It’s not even a question. I like to think I’m relatively steady in how I behave. The one thing I can’t handle and it would take me longer to get over is if there was a perceived lack of effort. If I see lack of effort and we get outrun, outworked and out-battled, that’s the big I would struggle with most. I haven’t seen that. People might disagree but I haven’t seen it.
I think our fighting tooth and nail for every ball. Have they made mistakes? Yeah, they have but that’s part and parcel of the game. Our problem has been that we haven’t recovered or bailed each other out when those mistakes have come and they’ve cost us dearly.
But in terms of belief in the next game, I’m confident we can go out there and perform extremely well and win. More than confident.
HOW HAVE THE PLAYERS TRAINED?
The players are not silly. They understand if performances are on a par to think we are good enough to win playing this way and playing
the way we have been or if we are not playing well enough. But results are always a big factor in how we feel because that’s what we play for. We play to win. We don’t play to be pleasing on the eye or to entertain but lose and go home. We play to win.
I think you could say confidence is a little bit fragile but you’d expect that and if it wasn’t you’d probably question our motivations.
The way I look at it, it should drive you even more to fix the next one. Don’t feel sorry for yourself, the next game is an opportunity to fix it and we need to be extremely determined to go and do it.
IT’LL BE A BIG STEP UP FOR HARRY SOUTTAR WHENEVER HE GETS BACK IN - CAN HE MAKE IT BEFORE THE WORLD CUP?
I don’t think there’s any doubt that Harry is capable but when you’re 6ft 6in... I’ll give you an example: Josh Tymon has been out for two batches of six weeks, 12 weeks in total, recently but Josh is quite small, nimble and a fit lad. Harry is 6ft 6in and he’s been out for 13 months. I don’t think they’re in the same ball park of being ready to play.
Harry has now had four bounce matches. Is he capable of playing? Yes, I think so. The only little bit extra he’s going to get is from playing matches. I’ll pick the team that I think is most ready to try to win us the game.