After beating Cardiff at the MKM Stadium last week in a scrappy match, we travelled to the Bet365 Stadium to face Stoke City. Our last outing with them resulted in a three nil victory to them at our ground. But, that was when we had Shota Arveladze in charge; however, now we have Rosenior bossing us and we have only lost two games out of 12, which is a much better record than the previous managers that we have had this season. Nonetheless, we headed into the match winning three, drawing one and losing one in our previous five league matches, whereas Stoke have won one and lost four. So once again we were the heavy favourites.
Despite feeling ill, I made the two hours and twenty minutes journey to the centre of England and I have to say that felt like one of the longest journeys. We had to pick people up on the way and once we got into the city, we had to wait for the police escorts to take us to the stadium. The amount of police that were distributed around the city was unnecessary and you would have thought that it was a local derby. So it ended up being over three hours until we got to the stadium.
The atmosphere was electric in the away end with the 2,520 travelling fans filling it out. I think that we took over the stadium to be honest as I did not hear anything from the 20,000 plus home fans. If it was not for us then you could have heard a pin drop. They were probably the worst home supporters I have seen this season and, also, they were just as bad when they came to our ground even though they thrashed us. This free travel is paying off superbly and we have been packing out the away end every game since it was put on.
The starting line-up was unchanged from our last game with Ingram in the net; Callum Elder, Cyrus Christie, Sean McLoughlin, Alifie Jones making up the back line; Regan Slater Jean Seri, Ozan Tufan, Greg Docherty in the middle; Oscar Estupiñán and Aaron Connolly as the front two. On the bench was Lewie Coyle, Jacob Greaves, Malcolm Ebiowei, Karl Darlow, Ryan Woods, Ryan Longman and Dimitrios Pelkas. It is great to see new signing Ebiowei as an option alongside Pelkas, who has been out injured for two months. We have also had news that Adama Traore has been getting involved in the under 25s matches and he will be another option for Rosenior in the upcoming fixtures. And, also, Benjamin Tetteh will be available in our next game after serving his three match ban.
The match started off with a minute of silence to show our support to the devastating disaster that happened in Turkey. With an owner and a player that is from Turkey, we showed our appreciation by bringing Turkish flags to the ground with us.
In the first period, we began by defending and this is not what we normally do. It seemed like we were struggling to settle and whenever we did receive the ball we did not have a clue what to do with it. Most of the time, we would just boot it or lose it again. This was very frustrating to watch. Stoke were the ones who dominated and I have to say that they knew how to run with the ball. For about 15 minutes they kept coming at us and if it were not for their poor finishing then we could have easily conceded. Another annoying thing that we kept doing was going backwards again and passing back to the goalkeeper, whose distribution in this game was terrible. At times he was out of his box or off his line, and he was terrible at booting it up field; it either went out of play or straight to the opposition. The only chance that we had in this half was a shot from outside the box by Connolly in the 38th minute. But, it was punched away by Matija Sarkic. And, also, a shot from Oscar Estupiñán from far out that forced another great save from The Potter’s goalkeeper. This is not what I was expecting at the start of the game to be honest as we were not threatening enough, we were weak at the back and each player looked like they could not be bothered. But, neither team was able to score and the first half ended 0-0.
We looked a little bit more organised in the second half and we certainly attacked more than we did at the start of the game. A huge opportunity came in the 54th; the ball was played into the box and it was taken by Connolly, who got as close to the goal as he possibly could, but he somehow scooped it over the bar. Why did he not go for one of the corners? On any other day he would have finished that. This was a great sign; however, we dropped off and let Stoke into the game. Yet again, we were the ones back deafening. A few threatening balls were played into the box, but Matt Ingram made some great saves to prevent us from equalising.
Later on in the half, we made a triple substitution: Malcolm Ebiowei for Ozan Tufan; Ryan Longman for Aaran Connolly, who did not have a good match to be honest and Jacob Greaves for Callum Elder. These substitutes had a great impact straight away as Longman advanced forward promisingly, but he dragged his shot wide from outside of the box. He had a lot of time and space and all he needed to do was be patient, choose where he wanted to place the ball and then take his shot. Instead, he rushed it and put it wide making the travelling supporters behind the goal more annoyed. After this, we got nowhere near the goal and for the remainder of the half Stoke dominated and they could have snatched a last minute winner that would have been the icing on the cake after a poor performance from us. But, fortunately, he did not make his chance count and the game ended 0-0.
Nonetheless, we have recorded a third successive clean sheet for the first time since January 2022. However, our wait for a league victory at Stoke stretches to eleven matches as we have not beaten them there in 17 years.
Overall we were dominated with Stoke having 55% of the possession to our 45% and they completed 467 passes to our 404. We did, however, have more shots, which was nine compared with their five, and that just shows that we had our chances but we failed to take them. In the end, it was a hard fought point and there are a few dilemmas that we need to rectify if we want to push for that top six. Our next match is Norwich, away, on Tuesday night, which I will be travelling to, and our last outing with them resulted in a 2-1 victory to us in our second home match of the season. Let’s hope that the 160 mile journey down the back roads, not on the fast roads, to the South of England is going to be worth it.
You can also watch the highlights here.