Winging it is what we are used to from Stoke
THE WAY I SEE IT
STOKE City always seem to have enjoyed games against West Brom. It doesn’t surprise me that we have won significantly more times against the Baggies than any other club in our long history.
There is a tradition about how some clubs play and Stoke’s style over the years of pressing, aggression and regaining has got the better of Albion’s possession-focused football. When they are ponderous it gives Stoke a chance to regroup and defend.
Whatever the system or belief – and I like Lou Macari’s old quote that there are two between Stoke and West Brom: a winning one and a losing one – the over-riding factor is that you have to find a way that gets the best out of your players.
Even then you might still face some stick. Tottenham, for example, have a reputation for keeping the ball and Antonio Conte has come in and changed it all. They are fourth in the Premier League and look like they could compete for silverware… and they’re still getting booed off at half-time.
Jose Mourinho turned Manchester United into a team whose strength lay in the counter-attack, just like he’d done at Porto at the start of his career. He won the Europa League and League Cup but still didn’t go down with supporters who have otherwise been moaning about their lack of winning since Sir Alex Ferguson’s exit.
For Stoke I still always think our best teams have been built around successful wingers – but we’ve only really got one out-and-out senior winger on the books at the moment in Tariqe Fosu. No doubt Alex Neil will be thinking about trying to bring in one or two in January.
Fans have generally never had much patience with wing-backs but perhaps that is borne from never having a successful team which plays that way.
Fosu has been used as a wing-back too and, with Graham Potter trying Raheem Sterling there too at Chelsea, it reminds me of Terry Venables at Euro 96. Most of the time, coaches borrow ideas off one another but occasionally you get someone who really comes up with something new.
Venables got Darren Anderton and Steve Mcmanaman as his wing-backs but what he also did was to play full-backs as the outer centre-backs in his back three: Gary Neville and Stuart Pearce. If the wide players were exploited defensively then you still had a defender who was comfortable being pulled wide a cover.
That, I think, is the key. Whenever you have an idea, it’s got to have balance. Sometimes it’s only a tweak to get it but it can make all the difference.
Stoke didn’t quite have balance in their starting XI last weekend against Birmingham, when I was surprised that Neil opted for Tyrese Campbell and Nick Powell as his front two, with Will Smallbone off the pace behind them. Campbell and Powell were up against a back three and their midfield got the better of us.
It would have been interesting to see how the game might have swung if Powell had dropped a little deeper next to Smallbone, making it two on one on their sitting midfield players. Campbell could have then worked off the central centre-back, coming short on an angle or spinning off and running behind. That would have isolated the side centrebacks, who would have been in a dilemma about holding their line or coming forward to mark Powell or Smallbone.
There would have been the temptation for those two defenders to come forward with the ball but that comes with the risk that we could win it back and hit them hard with a counter into space.
Or Stoke could have switched to a back four with Josh Tymon and Dujon Sterling at full-back, Jordan Thompson sitting and Powell behind Campbell and
Jacob Brown, who I hope we see much more of in the next few games after a stop-start couple of months. If they are running channels it isolates the central centre-back.
It is a challenge being a coach but an exciting one if you’re into your tactics, knowing that every decision you make has a knock-on effect. You’re constantly trying to exploit your opponents’ weaknesses but you have to be wary of how they are going to try to exploit yours.
Powell did play deeper in mid-week and although it was a bit scrappy, it was an important win – and he provided the killer moment at the start.
Stoke seem like a work in progress at the moment but football sides are always a work in progress, just at different stages of the chain. That includes looking to borrow ideas from other managers or even other sports.
The England women’s rugby team have been inspirational, for example, in how they have been so determined to break down barriers. That’s a lesson to all in sport: how can we keep pushing forward, and if we get knocked back, how do we come back stronger?
You have to be ruthless, you have to be ready for change – even if not necessarily at the Hawthorns, where we always hope history keeps repeating itself.