Great Stoke City Moments #2 – 14/10/2006

  Two months into the 2006/07 season, the outlook was grim for Stoke. After returning to the club in the summer, following former chairman Peter Coates’s buy-out of the Icelandic owners of the club, Tony Pulis had made a very bad start to his season. With just one win to our name, that coming against Premier League bound Derby in August, we sat in the bottom six of the Championship, and had been producing some uninspiring, turgid displays. Looking ahead at the fixtures then, Stoke fans would have been forgiven for fearing the worst ahead of a trip to the fallen giants of English football, and everyone’s least favourite team, Leeds United at Elland Road, who had themselves been struggling in the league after the sacking of manager Kevin Blackwell.

  We had been given a glimmer of optimism however, as Pulis had made three high profile loan signings in the week before the game, with Lee Hendrie, Salif Diao and Rory Delap (whose season would sadly be ended three days later by a horrific double broken leg suffered early in a 2-1 win against parent club Sunderland) arriving from Aston Villa, Liverpool and Sunderland respectively, the latter two still being at the club, and Hendrie stupidly having turned down a permanent move to the Britannia Stadium and now struggling to get close to the Sheffield United first team, under Blackwell, having spent time on loan at Leicester and Blackpool this season.

  
Hendrie, Diao and Delap all made impressive debuts for Stoke

  Hendrie made an instant impact for Stoke, curling in a beautiful free-kick after just five minutes to give us a 1-0 lead, with hope for our chances with the new signings in the side growing rapidly amongst the travelling Stoke contingent. After headed chances for Leeds and Stoke were missed by strikers Geoff Horsfield and Vincent Pericard, half-time came with Stoke a deserved goal to the good.

Diao wins the ball

  With the nerves beginning to show for Stoke in the early passages of the second half, it seemed very likely Leeds would get back into the game. All doubts were put to rest in a five minute spell around the hour mark though, with other new signings Andy Griffin and Danny Higginbotham getting on the scoresheet. Griffin, he had joined on loan from Portsmouth a month before showed that he possessed ball-striking ability to rival Hendrie’s, sending a stinging twenty yard drive into the top corner of Neil Sullivan’s goal to send the Stoke supporters into raptures.

  While the celebrations in the away end were still going strong, Higginbotham added the third. The defender, who had joined from Southampton in the summer, and claimed our player of the season award before making a probably money motivated move to Sunderland in 2007, rose unmarked in the box to head home Hendrie’s corner and set us well on our way to a first win at Elland Road in 25 years.

Higginbotham celebrates his goal with Griffin and Delap

  Late in the game, the hosts were given a chance to add some respectability to the scoreline, referee Trevor Kettle awarding them a dubious penalty after Stoke’s Michael Duberry, a former Leeds player was judged to have committed an infringement in the box. Substitute Robbie Blake was handed the responsibility of taking the kick, but probably shouldn’t have been, as Stoke ‘keeper Steve Simonsen was able to turn his poor effort around the post and protect his well-earned clean sheet.

  To rub salt into the Leeds wounds, Stoke made it four in injury time, another new signing, Ricardo Fuller netting his second goal for the club. After picking up the ball in the Leeds half, he carried it to the angle of the left hand side of their penalty area, before precisely curling the ball past Sullivan to make it four with arguably the goal of the game.

  This fine win was to kick start our season, and was the first of a string of good results that meant we flirted with the play-off places in the second half of the season. The end result of our efforts was disappointment however, as we missed out on the play-offs after a 1-1 draw at QPR on the final day, finishing eighth. Our day at Leeds was a happy memory at the end of the season though, and one all involved with Stoke still look back on fondly now.

  This result typified Leeds’s season, as they would slump to relegation to League One, much to the delight of almost everyone involved in football and where they happily still remain while Stoke battle with the best in the Premier League.

 

Stoke side on the day: (4:4:2)

                           Simonsen

Hoefkens  Duberry  Higginbotham  Griffin

           Hendrie  Russell  Diao  Delap

                      Sidibe  Pericard

Substitutions: Fuller for Pericard (66), Brammer for Diao (82), Chadwick for Hendrie (85)

Subs not used: Bangoura, Wilkinson

Attendance: 18,173

Leeds United 0-4 Stoke City