Match Day Thread Stoke City v Sunderland AFC – Saturday 21st October 2023 - KO 15:00

I think if we’d had two of Evans Ekwah Neil today we’d have been more competitive but looked inexperienced and slack in there today.

 

Another strange performance, passing not clicking and not at the pace we can play at.

 

When were bad were ****e mind no positives from that whatsoever, except maybe ekwahs return to fitness

 

Really , only two attacking players in midfield away from home is asking for trouble

 

Agree mate. You can’t spend months whinging about having no striker then look to divert the blame when you’ve got 3 sat on the bench not including Dack.

 

won't beat Norwich either

 

Sorry I thought our away form carried us through last season without a striker.

 

Didn't see the game so can't really say much, but I hope this isn't the start of a run of ****e results.

 

I think we all know only Neil can play the deeper role in our squad. It does look unbalanced on paper. Ekwah and Jobe are brilliant players but I think we need someone to allow them to play if that makes sense.

 

Still think it will be a ask to make the play offs. Tone is a championship steady hand. Nothing more.

 

Lucky sod, it was ****.

 

Kind of but it was with Gelhardt who was used to playing in central areas and Amad occupying multiple defenders. Today we played a winger with little experience playing in the middle.

 

Still cant believe the ref or lino didn't spot that handball.

Mind you the ref was inconsistent all game.

Their second goal doesn't make great viewing

 

Wish I didn't mate. Honking performance. Our summer window of players are not doing it. Only Jobe getting in the team. We look weaker than last year IMO.

 

True but have we won any game with a 2 in midfield when both are essentially attacking players, we tried that last year and lost if I remember correctly

 

top ten tony
will never get us promoted or any one else for that matter

 

Yep. Think i'd rather take a chance with someone else who could possibly take us further. Understand its a risk but the chance of success would be higher.

 

Jobe is 18 I think he has the potential to be whatever we want him to be in that midfield. Playing Neil as the DM stifles him imo, you should play your better players in their preferred positions. Still baffles me how many players we bought in similar positions and neglected that all important role. We’ve got potentially 5+ options behind the striker but no natural DM.

 

rarely does a game end where i feel sh1te because of our play but this is one of those occasions.

whole side looked way off the pace with very little knowledge of where to go, where to pass, whether to press or not, how to break the press and pretty much how to pass and have not really built up any kind of real attacking threat.

ba and roberts on the pitch together is not working right now, both have skills but seem to cancel each other out, we need to stop trying to recreate the amad/roberts partnership, bellingham needs a break i think, clarke has to wind his game in a bit and learn how to pass the ball...the players also need to stop this falling over too easy, it has gained a reputation in the league and we are losing out on what should be genuine fouls.

TM played this one wrong imho, only change needed was getting someone to do neil's job, get the ball and spray it around yet we had lads that were moving around too much and even had ba on the right wing picking a pass up, not hard for a team to beat us when we do not know what we are doing...plenty of lads fit again and lads very close to coming back but TM wants to get them out and go through a few things as they look devoid of confidence again.

plenty can be said about the ref but i cannot say he lost us the game, he was bad for both sides imho...although i have to refer to the old consistency, they had at least two players booked (rightly accoding to the rules) for pulling our lads back, i noticed both of them did it at least another twice and clarke should have gone in the book if the ref deemed that not to be a penalty, there were many other occasions such as the one when onien protected the ball and played it so the lad gave him a full on shove in the back but the ref did not even have a word.

always had this one down as a bad month but did not expect it being this bad.

 

At boiling point with anger atm always am when we lose.

We are always going to pick up injuries / suspensions throughout the season. Although we got some good signings in we've now still not addressed a goal scoring striker and we also didn't address the need for a cdm as cover. Hope people realise how important Neil has become now anyways.