OUR OPPONENTS: STOKE CITY Stoke City returned to winning ways in spectacular fashion against Coventry City away from home as they hit four past the Sky Blues to extend their unbeaten run in the Sky Bet Championship to five games. The Potters have earned maximum points in four of their last eight matches which has seen them climb to 13th and sit on 51 points – defeats to Blackpool and Millwall the only blemishes in a run of 10 games. Alex Neil will also be pleased to see how his side have developed at the back, as well as in front of goal, in recent outings after keeping back-to-back clean sheets against Norwich City and Coventry City. SO WE HAVE IT ALL TO DO!
HEAD-TO-HEAD STOKE CITY Matches won: 27Matches drawn: 15 Matches lost: 19 Top goalscorer: Tyrese Campbell (9)Top assists: Tyrese Campbell, Lewis Baker, Dwight Gayle, Josh Tymon (5) BRISTOL CITY Matches won: 19 Matches drawn: 15 Matches lost: 27 Top goalscorer: Nahki Wells (11) Top assists: Nahki Wells (6)
Home TeamRotherhamAway TeamWest Brom Possession Home 45% Away 55% Shots Home 22 Away 10 Shots on Target Home 10 Away 5 Corners Home 8 Away 3 Fouls Home 13 Away 11 LETS HAVE SOME OF THE HOME TEAM STATS TODAY CITY!!!!!!!!!!!!
THAT bird of prey or cartoon character on the away shirts must make some who sanctioned it shudder .. looks so very non Robin like and certainly like no known bird I can find in my books which show around about 300 species!
The obvious has finally happened and we go down 1-0 after sloppy defending. We are looking so far off the pace and Stoke have bossed the play all half and we got what we deserved.
Not much of the ball but we had the better chances, different game had we taken them. Our defending has never been the best, so inevitably we would concede one..
Forty five minutes spent chasing shadows has led us to a 0-1 deficit at the half. Few chances were found by us and we blew them all (2 actually) and Nakhi's was the worst because he had a dead cert chance that he shot well wide of the goal. Our passing out of defence is shocking as we probably gave 80% of them straight back to Stoke and if we were lucky enough to get it across the half-way line we ended up with poor decisions with the passing to one another. Nigel has to read the riot act at half-time otherwise we could get a thrashing against a Stoke side that has beaten us to just about every single ball and if they didn't it didn't matter as we just gave it back to them anyway. One of the poorest halves I have seen from us but regrettably we tend to play this way and then wonder why we struggle to compete in this division. The whole team look totally disoriented and bear an uncanny similarity to a bunch of players who have just met up on the Downs.
Why do we insist on trying to beat the attacker when you are the last line of the defence? Pring almost cost us there and he isn't the only one guilty of lousy decisions today and although we are slightly better this half we still look very shaky. The groans by Sykes in the commentary box about some of our poor plays might say it all.
