from an outsiders point of view, stoke's style of play perplexes a lot of people - i must admit to not seeing a lot of them this season mind. interesting MOTD don't seem to pass as view either way. now they are 'established', and they have bought some players like adam, kightly, why continue to play the long ball physical stuff? if you look at the stoke board, they don't seem to be too happy about it either.
their fans are restless, that's certainly true. i had been informed that stoke had 'improved' their style of play this season, but there was absolutely no evidence of this on saturday. perhaps people see the names 'adam' and 'nzonzi' and assume they'll play to feet a bit more. i'm not a charlie adam fan - i think he's pretty poor actually - but he's a name associated with passing football, so i think people have put two and two together without watching them...
i think they are far stronger prospect at home Supers. they've QPR at home this weekend, given their away form i'd predict a home win, but you never know this season.
Agree with this post entirely! Wes Hoolahan V Charlie Adam,.............Wes wins by a knockout in the first round! No contest.
absolutely. very difficult place to go, as proven by the fact many of the top clubs struggle there, but they are going to have to rely on that home form. i felt stoke would struggle this season - i based that on hearing that they were going to adjust their style. although i don't enjoy watching them they are very difficult to beat and i believed that a change would make them vulnerable. i don't think they'll go down cos i don't really think they have adjusted their style, but i do think they will be bottom 8 and very much a team we could finish above this season
The idea that they are trying to adapt to playing football is so widespread there must be something in it. Maybe at the end of last season somebody asked TP where he could see himself moving on to after Stoke, and he suddenly realised the only place he could look was down .......
They continue to do it because that's the only way Pulis knows how to play. He's brought in the likes of Kightly, Owen and Adam, even Walters to an extent, but if they aren't leading he resorts to the hoofball. While this was an effective tactic when they were a team of giants, it isn't anywhere near as effective when you try to play that way when you have the previously mentioned players on the pitch as they aren't tall enough to play that style of football. My dad summed it up well on the way home from the game. Pulis has ended up with a team who aren't quite good enough to play a passing game, but don't have the players to play hoofball successfully.
I'm somewhere between Superman and Delia. CH clearly is doing a good job of sorting us out, but we're still a work in progress. As for Stoke, they're going nowhere. They may hang around for this season and perhaps the next. But this league is getting better and better, and one year soon they'll be caught out.
I personally think Stoke will get through it, their not a bad side at all (very difficult to beat at Britannia) and if they're trying to play better football there is going to be a transitional period. I just got see them getting relegated with them being so hard to beat at home. On Saturday a lot of their play still had hoofball elements and their will be until they have more compatible strikers, but I think they were not as bad as I was expecting and probably not as bad as people are making out, at least I don't think they were on Saturday. I think we can finish higher than them though. I was thinking the other day that we could really pick up a lot of points christmas/new year. When the fixtures come thick and fast, I think our current second 11 could even stay up in this division that's how good out squad is. When injuries/ suspensions affect teams, I honestly think we'll relish.
The problem was that Stoke had about 5 of their players in or around our penatly box at the time! That's NOT the time to be doing it. I think Bassong took control eventually and sorted it out, but he was as guilty as the rest at the time. Don't get me wrong here I'm not bashing the team, because for 75 minutes we were very solid and I wouldn't fault anyone of them during that period, but we could have easily lost the game in the first 15 minutes, that worried me, especially as "exceptional defending" was mentioned, all I was pointing out that maybe WAS the case for the vast majority of the game but the first 15 minutes is was NOT!
