Well done Stoke

[bluwes]

Whose this Admiral you talk highly of ?

 

[Wrighty Wrexham]

Could we buy Delap in the summer and then loan him back to Stoke!

Then he wouldnt be eligible to play against us but could continue to terrorise our rivals!! ;)

 

[Fanzone Danny]

Fuck me has this become a Stoke Forum all of a sudden?

No offence guys but can't you have your conversations on one of your own forums?

 

[citygirl77]

Not enough support !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[mcfc_die_hard]

Fuck me has this become a Stoke Forum all of a sudden?

No offence guys but can't you have your conversations on one of your own forums?

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^THIS^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

 

[PistonBlue]

As a Stoke supporter, I'm quite honestly amazed at this thread. Slightly disappointed as well actually, I expected this sort of football snobbery from the precious, non-contact tippy-tappy clowns at Arsenal, but not from your lot. I always thought that being stuck next to that sickening mess of a club next door to you you'd be a bit more down to Earth and have a real appreciation of what the game's about. Unfortunately, a lot of posters on here seem to have had their heads turned by the Arab billions and have lost their way.

Would I pay to watch Stoke every week? Yes I would, and I do. Sunderland asides, we are the ONLY team in the Premier League to play the game in the spirit it was intended. No diving (Adebayor, Richards, Wright-Phillips), no feigning injury (Adebayor, Wright-Phillips), no harassing the referee (de Jong), just good, hard-but-fair football. Would our support be nearly as good if we were a bunch of boring, halfway line tippy-tappy cheats? Of course we wouldn't. We may get regularly punished for it, but the Stoke mentality is that if you're on the receiving end of a kick, you get up and get on with the game - see Whelan getting up and wagging his finger at Vieira after his forced vasectomy, or Andy Wilkinson getting kicked in the head against Blackburn and then getting straight up to try and seek out the player who did it, before then standing and having his stitches put in on the pitch. That's the way we play the game and we're proud of it. We're proud of the fact that our long throws keep on showing up overpaid prima-donna defenders who have had life far too easy in the Premiership, just dealing with the boring tippy-tappy stuff and becoming completely incapable of dealing with any variety in attack. I can't see how we're supposed to be horrible to watch when our style of play is based around getting the ball into the goalscoring area as soon as possible. We're not remotely interested in tippy-tappying it around on the halfway line before giving the ball away or smacking it out for a goal-kick. That kind of tedious, tedious rubbish is coma inducing stuff that has only one purpose - keeping the more precious players and the 'new' fans happy. Again, see Arsenal for that.

So would I pay to watch Man City every week? Without meaning to be too offensive here, no I wouldn't. I sit behind the dugouts and very rarely see a manager so vile as Mancini. Off the top of my head, in recent years I can only think of Ferguson, Benitez and Ramos who were worse. If Tony Pulis spent the game sticking his fingers up at Alan Wiley, he'd have quite rightly been sent to the stands. Mancini, however, spent the first half screaming at Wiley while making that Italian gesture that looks sort like waving an imaginary card except done at mouth level and got away with it. At half time, with Man City very lucky to have 11 men on the pitch, Mancini and Kidd followed Wiley all the way back to his dressing room, still bawling at him. I don't know what was said and done, but we all saw the completely different second half refereeing performance, further details of which can be found here. I've seen plenty of threads on here performing an autopsy on your current squad and I'll just throw some suggestions into the ring. It is to Mark Hughes' eternal shame that somebody with his reputation should spend so much money on so many mentally and physically weak players. It is to Mancini's shame that he should persist in playing these players. When we saw that Toure and Adebayor were on the team sheet, we were all licking our lips. When your backs are against the wall, those two are complete liabilities. Toure doesn't seem to have worked out that the best way to stop the long throw is to stop needlessly putting the ball into touch in your own half and then collapses whenever a ball does come into the box. If we include the disallowed goal from Tuesday, that's 4 long throw goals he's been involved in now and in all of them his defending was very suspect. He needs getting rid of immediately and a real centre-back being brought in. As for Adebayor, you may want to watch a video of us playing Arsenal at home last season. Fun clips include him getting frustrated and stamping on a Stoke player, pleading with Wenger to substitute him and then hilariously staggering about the pitch before lying on the floor in a crucifixion position demanding be let off the pitch. On Tuesday night he just wasn't up for the battle again and spent most of the game cowering around. The only incident he had any part in was the sending off, his part being to unnecessarily roll around on the floor clutching his leg. For a player to indulge in that kind of antic is indicative of a lack of dignity, self-respect and, of course, complete mental fragility. Mancini doesn't appear to have the tactical nouse of Hughes either. It took Hughes about 10 minutes of watching video footage of us to work out that if you can cut out our target man and isolate Fuller, we'll offer almost no threat. To do this, he deployed Kompany in a defensive midfield position in the game at the CoMS with the sole duty of man marking Sidibe. This left four defenders to deal with Fuller. It worked a treat and you eased to victory. Over 180 minutes, Mancini has failed to notice this and has given Sidibe a free rein, allowing him to get all over the opposition half winning the ball in the air and playing in Fuller time and time again. The end result is that over the two games, you can barely think of 20 minutes worth of play where you were in control. I think somebody has to do a lot of soul searching when at your place, the best player on the pitch was Sidibe and at our place the best two players on the pitch were Fuller and Delap.

As for the time taken for a Delap throw - if you want 30 seconds injury time for every throw-in, we want 30 seconds for every corner and free-kick you have. It's a goalscoring opportunity for us and we need to get our routine set up to give us the best possible chance of scoring. By and large, the same people who have spent this season complaining about the time it takes for a throw-in to be taken are the same ones who spent last season rimming the Androgynous Wonder at The Shit last season, as he stood with his legs wide open for a couple of minutes before he could be bothered toe-bunting his free-kick towards the goal. It takes some gall to say we were timewasting to be honest, what with Given's first half antics when you were playing for the 0-0.

The atmosphere - again, sitting behind the dugout I'm in a pretty good position to hear what comes from both ends. Neither sets of fans were outstanding and your lot were pretty quiet asides from barracking the referee as he went towards the tunnel. We weren't at our best in terms of songs, but we did recreate the bizarre phenomenon wherein highly paid professional footballers shrink and make stupid mistakes when faced with a bit of booing. Don't worry though, you're not the only team to suffer from this. Last season, when we got beat 5-0 at the Theme Park, the Androgynous Wonder was still the worst player on the pitch by a long, long way, making stupid mistakes, giving the ball away and even whining to the police and referee about the nasty Stoke fans calling him names. When we played against them at home on Boxing Day, he was again absolutely woeful and should have been sent off for a Vieira style kick-out at Wilkinson. Don't ask me why it happens, but it does.

By the way, what's with your pitch? That astroturf that's virtually on the touchline is downright dangerous and did for Etherington.

Good luck for the rest of the season, I'd much rather you got fourth place than Liverpool. Just don't go all continental and non-contact, buy some proper footballers with your money instead.

I looked at the length of your post and for a moment I thought it might be a sensible one, but it turns out you're just a liar.

 

[unexpected item]

MysticalDescent, what is this tippy-tappy you repeatedly refer to?

 

[PistonBlue]

Bullshit. As a manager of a football team you decide what your strengths are gonna be. Pulis has decided his team should kick other teams all over the pitch and then roll over as if they've been shot at the first hint of a challenge. Pulis has decided that his teams main attacking threat is gonna be a throw in. Why? cos he can't coach a team to play a passing game. It's not football, it's wank, and the daft fuckers from Stoke think it's great. Wankers one and all, but then they always were. See Sam Allardyce for a similar appraisal, although at least Big Sam doesn't wear a stupid looking baseball cap.

oooohh errrrr sour grapes???

Not at all Stokie, you didn't beat us for a start? I just don't think the 'we play to our strengths' argument stands up. A manager decides how he wants his to play and builds his squad accordingly, through coaching and scouting for a certain type of player.

 

[manchester blue]

I stopped reading that post after he said SWP was a diver and feings injury. I'll take the other two but Wright-Phillips is one of the most fouled fottballers in the league and as honest as they come.

 

[MysticalDescent]

In no particular order:

MysticalDescent, what is this tippy-tappy you repeatedly refer to?

Boring halfway-line football. Just as ugly as the long ball game but with the added bonus of being as boring as hell. Think of Arsenal on a bad day or when they play their reserves and just bumble about with it on the halfway line with no real penetration.

Somebody else said that if every team played like Stoke, the grounds would be empty. Well currently Stoke have the ground 95.2% full on average (source: ITV stats), where as Martinez's Samba Football warriors are down in last place on 71.9%. Actually, that figure isn't entirely accurate as the actual number of tickets on sale on any given matchday is 27,500, but they put the total capacity as 28,384.

I stopped reading that post after he said SWP was a diver and feings injury. I'll take the other two but Wright-Phillips is one of the most fouled fottballers in the league and as honest as they come.

It's true that he does get lumps kicked out of him, (wasn't there a lot of fuss about it in your game against The Shit?), but he's not averse to being a dying swan either. I seem to remember that even cutting out the Delap incident at our place last season, Wright-Phillips spent much of his time on the pitch marding around to whoever would listen. Let's not forget about The Shit's Androgynous Wonder - last season he was probably the most fouled player in the league, but it didn't mean he wasn't a despicable, whiny cheat.

Fuck me has this become a Stoke Forum all of a sudden?

No offence guys but can't you have your conversations on one of your own forums?

We're talking about the match on a thread that was written about our team. Don't we get a right of reply?

I got to 4 words in, anyone beat that

Well done you. Does that mean 'I'm too stupid to read anything over a line long but I'm covering up for my own deficiencies by posting a smarmy attention seeking comment after it' or does it mean 'I read all of that and I'm too stupid to think of anything else to say'?

If you play the game in the right attitude then why does Fuller go down like he has been shot every single time he gets touched?

Does he? What exactly are you talking about here, the penalty incident wherein Barry actually took the boot off Fuller's foot? I'll openly admit that Fuller is the closest we have to a cheat, but he's also one of the most hard done to players in the league. Sometimes he leaves his foot in and sometimes he goes down too easily, but that overlooks incidents such as one the other week where he was charging through the defence, got fouled, tried to stay up but eventually lost his footing and wasn't given the penalty. He really does get lumps kicked out of him every game, though.

Fair play for you coming on here and making a passioned defence of your team and its tactics.

Personally speaking I dont find the Stoke way of playing is worth watching as an entertainment. I think you will find this too after a couple more years in the premier. I think you are still have the small time mentality of trying to put one over the big boys. If you want to be successful in this league you are not going to do it by playing long ball.

Come back in a couple of years when the novelty of the premier has worn off, I bet you'll be longing for the pitch to be widened and play some open and expansive football

Let's see, it's worked thus far and at the moment the process of 'evolution' as opposed to 'revolution' is working out for us. We still get the ball into the opposition half as quickly as possible, but where we're improving is keeping it there and actually applying sustained pressure.

I looked at the length of your post and for a moment I thought it might be a sensible one, but it turns out you're just a liar.

Feigning injury, eh? I suppose that refers to the game at Eastlands, where three of our players were forced off through injury, one of which was down to the close proximity of the astroturf to the actual pitch. I can recall the following specific instances of Stoke players 'feigning' injury - Etherington after he had sustained ligament damage by sliding onto the astroturf, although he lay down off the pitch instead of crawling back on like Adebayor for Arsenal or the Mighty N'Gog for Liverpool; Lawrence when he first picked up a knock, Lawrence when he was forced off, Sidibe when Huth headbutted him in the stomach at full speed and a player who I can't remember sometime in the second half.

"hard-but-fair football" and from your link, "What followed was a chase and a superb challenge from behind that won the ball, before the last man (Collins) received the ball from the tackle and moved away with it. Wiley quite correctly adjudged it a fair challenge. The linesman waved his flag furiously and penned the referee into making the wrong decision. Adebayor didn’t help with his cowardly rolling around on the floor. It was not a sending off because Faye was not the last man, Collins was, and he won the ball"

Fair play for defending your team but how does this "analysis" really equate with what happened, watch the replays mate, sorry but your credibility got thrown out the window by Rory Delap and is still hurtling down the M6 as we speak.

Technically, that is true. Adebayor rolled around on the floor, Faye did win the ball and being very optimistic, Collins was the last man. Having seen several replays later I can appreciate that there was a small tug of the shirt before the challenge came in. Had the referee stuck by his decision, there's enough in there to justify it. There is enough evidence to justify the decision that was given.

The report itself was written immediately after the match and I am aware that there are sections of it where the tone is slightly less measured than it ought to be. Still, we all say and think over-the-top things at football matches.