Re: bored.....
Ducado said:
Balti said:
stoke were shit but I never get bored of watching City win :=)
They played the same tactics as Reading, but this time we played differently
The difference is that Stoke shouldn't be playing with the same tactics as Reading. Reading are shite. They're relegation fodder. They came and parked the bus in an attempt to get a 0-0 draw, they very nearly got it too, but they did that because it was the only avenue open to them. Reading's side is woefully short on quality, if they'd tried to play football against us we'd have murdered them.
Stoke are not Reading. Whilst not being the most technically gifted set of footballers, they are all Premiership quality (with the possible exception of Wilkinson who is just a clumsy, thuggish League One player stealing a living as a Premiership footballer) and they certainly have a great deal more invention and skill to them than Reading do. You'd expect them to show greater ambition, and to have the ability to make more of a game of it. We've now played Stoke, at home, in the Premiership 5 times, they have still to score a single goal against us! If anything exemplifies their lack of ambition in our games against them then it's that. 3-0, 2-0, 3-0, 3-0 and now another 3-0 are the results we've achieved. Easy wins each and every time. Pulis' tactics of "parking the bus", the tactics he's invariably employed in those 5 games, demonstratively don't work. He either lacks the tactical nouse to achieve a result in this defensive manner, or else his players are not suited to it. Stokes' seemingly annual away struggles would lead you to believe Pulis just doesn't know how to play away from home against Premiership talent. Since they reached the Premier League Stoke have played 87 away games, they've won just 14 of those, drawing 26 and losing 47. They've also only managed to score more than 2 goals in 1 of those 87 matches! Stoke have yet to put together even an average set of away fixtures in a season, their home form is why they stay clear of the relegation fight where they adopt a totally different approach to games. Quite why Pulis does't try a variation of his home tactics in the away games, less attacking obviously but at least with an attempt to get forward, is beyond me. Maybe it's beyond him too.
