Stoke down to 10 men after 8 minutes, Clucas sent off - straight red
It seems it was for stamping on Scowen? (Brave or foolhardy, it was best Clucas left the field...). As is often the case, it is not that much easier breaking down 10 players as opposed to eleven.
You told us so northwest mate Point nearer safety hey
The Stoke player straight red totally deserved He looked down and then stamped on his ankles Blatant as that
What about Hall's two yellows - were they deserved? It means he will be replaced during his suspension probably by Lynch unless Furlong takes a CB place.....
Lynch ( Nooooooooooooooooooooooo Rotherham a very physical side and would of suited hall down to the ground Don’t mention lynch to northwest anyone shhhhhhssssh
Lynch mob are out I’ll let down his tyres and immobilise his car with my laptop Northwest you tell him the games been rearranged Maybe Cameron could play centre back
It was very rough game by the look of it Lots of niggling and pushing and shoving even Wszolek had a push and shove with a stoke player Grant hall second yellow was deserved though if I’m honest Just one of those games Very boring to watch with a severe lack of quality from both sides
We are such a poor team and lack any confidence. When McClaren plays 4-4-2 it tells me that he has used his Plans A to Z and has now reverted to Plan A (which never previously worked). McClaren just compounded my thought that he is tactically inept when I saw that he was going to play Cousins in defence. Cousins is a poor midfielder and he isn't a great defender either.
Once Stoke went down to 10 men their fans were baying for a reciprecol red card for one of our players and if Pav hadn't been substituted he would have been that man. To even the numbers up Hall who already had been shown a yellow decided to lung at a Stoke player on the edge of our box and promptly got a 2nd yellow followed by a red. Why he decided on such a stupid challenge when already carrying a booking only he will know. Stupidity at its best.
Conor Washington used to get lots of stick but for me Wells isn't much better. He is a striker who works but rarely scores. As I have said McClaren is tactically inept and it was proved further when he played Hemed but didn't seem to realise that he is only at his most effective when we are playing with 2 wide men. Hemed was hardly in the game and only came to life late on.
I am convinced that if Stoke had kept 11 men on the pitch they would have beaten us today. To win a game you have to score and we never looked likely.
Our best player today was good old steady Eddie, Jake Bidwell. He has the odd bad game but overall he is as reliable a defender as we have.
Thanks for the feedback stoatey, valuable and informed as always.
I just cannot believe that when we last played Stoke just 4 months ago the club was buoyant and everybody was in top form and we looked so dangerous.
Now we've ended up with nothing to play for. Some players probably can't wait for their loans to end, some are probably playing out their contracts, some are going through the motions. Really worrying times.
This team at the moment would be a poor league one side I personally think we have enough to compete but the systems the manager wants them to play doesn’t suit them He just keeps changing it and the players can’t adjust to which position is best for them We also have some very lazy players and that again is down to poor management and training ground methods
We didn't lose and kept another clean sheet at home which will only help improve the confidence of the defence and Lumley and picked up a very valuable point.
I'm not buying any of this 'we should have won as they had 10 men' stuff as it can often be much harder to break down 10 men rather than 11. Yes maybe it is poor that we didn't do more, but that's the kind of game that we would quite often go on to lose.
Stoke aren't a bad side, they do score quite a few goals and know how to grind results. They've only lost twice away from home in 2019 so must be doing something right.
A few people after the Middlesbrough loss were saying they couldn't see where the next point was coming from. Since then, we've picked up 4. Not great I accept, but still a hell of a lot better than what we were doing before that.
We also had a horrible run of fixtures that we're now out of, with a couple of VERY winnable home games coming up this month. 6 points against Rotherham and Bolton means we can finally end any lingering thoughts of the drop and can start to plan for next season.
We've also finally come out of the other side of FFP which will only be a positive thing going forward, maybe this means we can bring in some proper players during the summer? Maybe we'll lose some players, but I do believe we'll replace them appropiately (naivety at its finest)
Just remember, if we wanted an easy time supporting a football club then we'd all be City or Liverpool fans by now - supporting this club isn't always easy, but it certainly isn't boring
Hope you are wrong! Certainly getting heated out there judging by the number of bookings!!
