Stoke City 0-1 Derby County – My View

  Last night Stoke hugely disappointingly crashed out at home to Derby in the Carling Cup quarter final, taking away what will probably be our best chance of winning any major silverware for several years to come, and may well have been our best chance since our 1972 League Cup success.

  What makes it so disappointing is that there is no way Stoke should have lost to Derby last night. When people say things like that, they usually mean that one team deserved to win the game, and only lost because of bad luck and/or poor refereeing decisions. In no way am I implying that this is the case. Derby were equally as good as Stoke, if not better last night and a Stoke win would definitely have been hard on Derby. We cannot blame bad luck, as Derby had most of that, hitting the woodwork on two separate occasions, and we cannot blame poor refereeing, as although controversial referee Rob Styles, who has made some huge mistakes in the recent past and is generally loathed by Stoke fans, awarded Derby a late penalty and disallowed a Stoke goal, in my opinion both decisions were correct. Richard Cresswell probably did handle the ball on his way through to goal and Andy Griffin did handle the ball inside the Stoke penalty area.

  On the night, we were terrible, and never deserved to win. By saying we never should have lost to Derby I am saying that with the quality of Stoke’s players and our recent excellent home form, beating a Championship side like Derby at home should provide few problems, but it did. We cannot even use the excuse that we played a weakened team, as so many defeated Premier League sides have done in the past, as we did not really, without being an absolute full strength side, the players on the pitch for Stoke should have been more than able to beat Derby.

  On the night we never got going. For the third straight home game, following from the 1-0 win over West Brom and the 1-1 draw with Hull there seemed to be little fight in the Stoke players and little creative spark. contrast this to the incredible battling performances put in just a month ago in the wins over Arsenal and Tottenham. In those games we won every tackle, chased down every ball and most importantly attacked with an urgency that was so far detached from last night’s efforts that it is hard to accept that it was the same team playing.

  It is undeniable that with so many people, particularly in the media, writing us off as relegation fodder before the season had even begun, the Stoke players have adopted something of a siege mentality, a sense of unity and underdog spirit born from a desire to prove all those who dubbed Stoke ”The New Derby” wrong.

  It is possible that having performed so well and achieved so much while playing under the underdog label that when a run of fixtures that the club is expected to win came along (West Brom, Hull, Derby all at home) the players did not know what to do and froze up, resorting to the dire hoofball tactics reminiscent of the 2004/05 season of binary football, where few scorelines were made up of anything other than noughts and ones. Far from proving those who have doubted Stoke wrong, performances like last nights only suggest that everything that has been said about Stoke playing dull, scruffy football is right.

  Sure, we got the win against West Brom, but they are in all honestly looking like a very poor side, and a seemingly respectable draw with Hull, but that came thanks to a favourable refereeing decision and a penalty and hardly lives up to beating the team that just three years ago went an entire season unbeaten.

  Even our most effective weapon, the Rory Delap long throw seems to have ceased to work, Delap failing to gain the power and flat trajectory on his throws that he was previously achieving. He didn’t even bother to cross the pitch to take throws, such was the unlikelyhood of us scoring from them. Even on the occasions when the throws, or some other means, usually a hoof and a flick did lead to a goalscoring chance, our finishing was woefully inadequate. Figures of just three effort on target from a total of fourteen tell the story, really only one of those three, Leon Cort’s second half header requiring anything more than a routine save from Roy Carroll in the Derby goal.

  That being said, we must take nothing away from Derby. They achieved what many teams have failed iin outfighting and out-muscling Stoke, they put together some of the best moves of the match, the passage of play resulting in Kris Commons heading onto the bar springs to mind, and ultimately when they got their best chance they took it, something Stoke were unable to do. Their defence was absolutely excellent, eighteen year old centre back James Tomkins played with a maturity well beyond his years, winning almost every single aerial challenge against Mamady Sidibe, no mean feat and something defenders such as Kolo Toure and Martin Laursen have been nowhere near able to do. He also made a superb block from Ricardo Fuller late on when a goal looked a certainty. Full back Jordan Stewart was also very good, notably making a brilliant last ditch tackle to deny Fuller, who although having quite possibly the worst game of his life would quite possibly have found the net against a less heroic defensive line.

  Next up for Stoke is a trip to Newcastle on Saturday, where a result would come in very handy at a time where morale around the club is low. Looking at the bench for Stoke last night I though that there is absolutely no-one on it that can freshen things up and go and win us the game. Wing duo Michael Tonge and Tom Soares were both cup-tied so unable to play, but these are two that I think can make a difference for Stoke, as we have seen with Soares’ excellent performance against Tottenham, and Tonge’s arguably matchwinning contribution against West Brom. At least one, preferably oth of these two should start at Newcastle, but even then, we seem to have a lack of strength in depth in the squad, with back-up players such as Ibrahima Sonko hardly putting in convincing shifts last night.

  A refreshed outlook, as well as some well placed investment in the January transfer window is needed by Tony Pulis, but who knows, maybe we’ll go to Newcastle at the weekend, enjoy being underdogs again and win 3-0. In order to stay up in the Premier League this season, we’ll need to recreate the level of commitment and performance shown against Arsenal, and sadly the last three home games, particularly last night’s have been a long way from that. Hopefully we will rediscover that form and prove those doubters wrong, but after last night’s showing, for the first time since our loss at Bolton on the opening day of the season, I doubt we can.

Player Ratings:

Steve Simonsen: Simmo didn’t it truth have a huge many saves to make, largely because the frame of the goal did most of the work for him. He never looked like saving the penalty though, and seemed to dive conveniently out of its path. I feel more confident with Sorensen in goal, and am glad the Dane is being favoured in the league. 6

Andy Griffin: Against his former club Griff had a poor match. He was largely anonymous and when he did get involved it was in a very bad way, giving away a last minute penalty. He may argue that the ball came too quickly for him to get out of the way of, but the truth is if he and the other members of the team had not been so asleep to the short corner in the first place, the situation where a penalty could have been given away would never have arisen. 4

Leon Cort: Back in the starting eleven for the second consecutive game, Leon acquitted himself better than most of the Stoke players, but was still some way from being good. he lost out for strength to the Derby forwards a few times but did create an attacking threat from set pieces and got a good header on target in the second half and was only denied a goal by a good save. 6

Ibrahima Sonko: Sonko hasn’t had a huge amount of first team football this season and didn’t look at all sharp last night. He seemed to lack the pace and assured style of play that we see in usual first choice Abdoulaye Faye, and judging from last night’s game alone he would look like a poor buy. The again, he did alright aginst Everton, Liverpool and Tottenham, and anyone judging most of the Stoke players on last night’s performance alone would struggle to see how they form the core of a Premier League squad. Disappointing nonetheless. 4

Danny Higginbotham: Also largely anonymous on the night, Danny is one of the greatest culprits of the aimless hoof, something that has become once again an all too central part of our game. 5

Rory Delap: Without his long throws working, again thwarted by the tactics that have been favoured by both Derby and Hull of leaving three men forward, Rory added little to the Stoke side on the night. 5

Seyi Olofinjana: Back in the side for the first time in three weeks, Seyi did little to impress, which is not surprising when playing in a midfield that was almost totally bypassed. This is very frustrating as a Olofinjana/Whelan midfield partnership is one that is more than capable of bossing the game and passing well, so what do we do? Repeatedly hit the ball over them! 5

Glenn Whelan: Probably the furthest from the first team of any of the players who played last night, Glenn was trying to prove himself to Pulis and it showed, he was by far the most committed player on the pitch and despite being one of the smallest seemed to win more headers than any other Stoke player. He should definitely be closer to a regular starting place than he is, especially considering he plays all game very game under Trappattoni for Ireland. His delivery was also very good. 7

Richard Cresswell:He’s not a winger and again it showed. He isn’t aware enough of what’s going on around him to play out wide and lacks pace and crossing ability. what he is is a goal poacher, and poach a goal he did, charging down a clearance before putting it away one on one, pity it was disallowed. 5

Mamady Sidbe: Unusually for Mama, he was second best in the air, losing most of the aerial challenges to the Derby centre back pairing of Powell and Tomkins. Without his flick-ons really working he was ineffective and missed a very good chance late on. 5

Ricardo Fuller:Ricardo had what was almost certainly his worst game for Stoke. He couldn’t pass, he won nothing, he dwelled on the ball too long and he put numerous efforts comically wide. If he was on his game we could have scored a hat-trick, but unfortunately he wasn’t and he just has to move on to the next game and hope to find his form again. 3

Danny Pugh (sub): Coming on with just ten minutes left he had little time to make an impact. 6

Key head to heads appraisal:

Glenn Whelan v Przemeslaw Kazmierczak

Whelan was in my opinion Stoke’s best player on the might but he still didn’t have his own way over Kazmierczak in the Derby midfield. I’d call this a draw.

Ibrahima Sonko v Rob Hulse

Sonko struggled with the Derby forward line, admittedly more-so Ellington that Hulse though, but still, a a Hulse victory in this one.

My man of the match: Glenn Whelan

As this is written from a Stoke perspective, I have given the man of the match as always to a Stoke player. Despite Whelan being the best Stoke player on the night, he was nowhere near being the best player on the pitch, that honour would have gone to young Derby defender James Tomkins, on loan from West Ham who was outstanding in only his second game for the club.

 

Stoke’s best player, Glenn Whelan with the true man of the match, James Tomkins