Stoke City at home match thread

[Unan]

Alex Neil really is the shitester king in unsportsmanlike conduct, master of dark arts, a cheat

[frenchred]

3 minutes ago, Marcus Aurelius said:

Alex Neil really is the shitester king in unsportsmanlike conduct, master of dark arts, a cheat

But he wins

[GrahamC]

14 minutes ago, lenred said:

Atmosphere was absolutely dreadful yesterday I thought.  Even when we were winning.   As someone has said above there just seems to be a general malaise around AG these days but yesterday it really stood out for me.   

Agree, the combination of Black Saturday, it being on the red button & it being absolutely freezing of late (I know a fair few who are unwell) meant it was a low crowd who seemed like they were there out of duty, not good all round.

6 minutes ago, Marcus Aurelius said:

Alex Neil really is the shitester king in unsportsmanlike conduct, master of dark arts, a cheat

He is, but as he’s been doing this stuff for years when at Preston, (the masters of the fake head injury) then briefly at Sunderland, it should hardly have come as a surprise.

His teams are a dreadful watch but he’s effective, people will put up with it when you’re winning but it’s not much fun when you’re on a poor run.

[Red_Alligator]

1 hour ago, OddBallJim said:

Is it bad that I far more enjoy the social aspect of Matchday (I.e. meet up in pub beforehand, half time pasty, post game pub pit stop) than the actual football on offer? 

Not at all Jim. I'm sure most of us feel the same way. 

[Bazooka Joe]

Thinking about those two free-kicks in the first half, where we tried to do something clever instead of getting the ball into their box, and badly cocked it up.

Why do our players keep gettong it so terribly wrong?

Either these "rehearsed" free-kicks simply don't work or our players are totally incapable of implementing the coaching they've received.

By the way, I'm not just suggesting we should have pumped a high ball into the box for the giant Souttar to head away.

But, even that would have been better than what eventually transpired.

 

 

[Lew-T]

18 hours ago, Northern Red said:

And, lo, the narrative was set.

As I said earlier, manna from heaven for certain people. Absolutely revelling in it.

You can take the piss at others, but you can’t ignore that shite yesterday.

[Red-Robbo]

3 hours ago, frenchred said:

But he wins

 

Well, Stoke only have two more points than us, so he's no master-at-work.  A competent ref would've carded some of their simulation, punished their fouls off the ball and potentially awarded us a penalty. Not to mention the corner he missed.

We were poor as a unit, and it wasn't the ref's fault we lost though.  Pearson's duff decisions hobbled us unnecessarily. Man-for-man I thought we had better player - at least in midfield and attack - but poor selection, poor coaching, poor subs, meant we were unable to take the point we deserved. 

[Midred]

Remind me not.to go on Robins tv again, my win rate is 10%!

[RedM]

59 minutes ago, Red-Robbo said:

 

Well, Stoke only have two more points than us, so he's no master-at-work.  A competent ref would've carded some of their simulation, punished their fouls off the ball and potentially awarded us a penalty. Not to mention the corner he missed.

We were poor as a unit, and it wasn't the ref's fault we lost though.  Pearson's duff decisions hobbled us unnecessarily. Man-for-man I thought we had better player - at least in midfield and attack - but poor selection, poor coaching, poor subs, meant we were unable to take the point we deserved. 

Agreed. I don't think we did enough to win the game, but we shouldn't have lost it either.

Yes Stoke were negative with their gameplay but as the home team we should be able to impose ourselves onto them instead of being sucked in and forced to play their way. And not only Stoke, this seems to happen too much. We try to play a bit of attractive football then get respondent and give up, we don't have a plan B that works. If we can't match a physical team then we got to unlock them a different way, be smarter.

[Red-Robbo]

4 minutes ago, RedM said:

Agreed. I don't think we did enough to win the game, but we shouldn't have lost it either.

Yes Stoke were negative with their gameplay but as the home team we should be able to impose ourselves onto them instead of being sucked in and forced to play their way. And not only Stoke, this seems to happen too much. We try to play a bit of attractive football then get respondent and give up, we don't have a plan B that works. If we can't match a physical team then we got to unlock them a different way, be smarter.

 

An example was the 10-player handbags incident near the end of the 90.  It was just what Stoke and Alex Neil wanted. Wasted about 45 seconds with pointless jostling and the ref trying to calm the situation. I bet precisely 0 seconds were added to the clock for that.

You gotta be canny, ignore the noise and just focus on getting the ball up the pitch and into their net. 

Edited December 18, 2022 by Red-Robbo

[RedM]

14 minutes ago, Midred said:

Remind me not.to go on Robins tv again, my win rate is 10%!

I haven't checked it out but someone said to me that our win rate on Saturday at 3pm was fairly non existent too.

[italian dave]

7 minutes ago, RedM said:

I haven't checked it out but someone said to me that our home win rate on Saturday at 3pm was fairly non existent too.

1 point from 5 games after yesterdays game. 

[ralphindevon]

59 minutes ago, RedM said:

I haven't checked it out but someone said to me that our win rate on Saturday at 3pm was fairly non existent too.

It really is abysmal, in fact as I was away for the last home game of the season v Hull, I haven’t seen us win at home on a traditional Saturday 3pm KO since February last year v Boro, 10 months ago.

[Davefevs]

8 hours ago, lenred said:

Atmosphere was absolutely dreadful yesterday I thought.  Even when we were winning.   As someone has said above there just seems to be a general malaise around AG these days but yesterday it really stood out for me.   

It was wasn’t it.  Do gloves stifle the noise that much.  

[Supersonic Robin]

I'm surprised by just how negative the reaction to the Stoke game has been on here.

I don't think it was as bad as many are making out. IMO we were clearly the better team and created enough decent chances to win the game. It was frustrating as hell to gift them 2 incredibly soft goals, but I've seen far more worrying matches at Ashton Gate than that. It's important to distinguish between "That was frustrating" and "That was dreadful".

The Stoke game provides a decent example for both my main source of encouragement and concern (which are sort of 2 sides of the same coin).........

Encouraging: I still think we look better than a bottom 6 side. IMO there are definitely at least 3-6 worse teams than us. We frequently show that we have more to offer than your average bottom 6 side would.

Concerning: Despite looking better than many teams, we struggle to convert performances into results. We continue to gift soft goals to sides who don't offer enough of a threat to deserve it. We often shoot ourselves in the foot and leave with less points than we probably deserve.