Stoke City are getting stuck in the wrong half of Championship mid-table after going six games without a win and three without a goal. Here are the talking points from The Valley and a 1-0 defeat to Charlton Athletic.
A long bus ride home
It was what Mark Robins didn’t say that probably spoke volumes at full-time. He was passionate while keeping his cool in his post-match interviews – but it was set to be a long drive back up from London for the players.
He said: “In the dressing room, normally I go in and speak. Tonight I went in and said, ‘Get yourselves in the shower, get on the bus and we’re going home.’ It’s going to be a long journey home and I’ll deal with that. I’ll deal with that.
“You find yourself saying the same thing, day in, day out, week in, week out. At some point it’s got to click.
“This is just about know-how, it’s about players throwing themselves into positions.
“Let’s face it, it’s what the game is about. Go and enjoy scoring goals, go and enjoy trying to score a goal. Let’s see if we can do that and get in the right positions and be there. If you miss them, I’ve got no problem because people make mistakes.
“But, the proverbial, if you don’t buy a ticket you don’t win the raffle and if you don’t shoot there is only one outcome isn’t there.
“We’ve got to keep going. It is massively disappointing.”
A rare mistake from Ashley Phillips
Stoke, by the manager’s admission, have been disjointed over the last few weeks as one thing has led to another but Ash Phillips has been a pretty reliable fixture through it all.
You could see the horror through his whole body as he realised he had let in Tyreece Campbell to score the winner late on here. He hasn’t made many mistakes like that and he looked like he had the world on his shoulders at full-time. It was Tatsuki Seko who went over to put his arm around him while teammates were deflated, with hands on knees.
The point Robins was making was that mistakes happen – and it shouldn’t have had such a weight on it because, by that point in a game like the one at Charlton, Stoke should have scored enough at the other end.
“He was crestfallen,” said Robins. “He’s not put a foot wrong and, when it happened, it doesn’t matter if you’ve scored two or three goals. It just makes things interesting at the end of the game.
“You have to put them to the sword. If you’ve got as much of the ball in good areas as we had then you’ve got to make it count. We’re just not good enough in that final third at the moment, for whatever reason.
“We make the wrong decisions and it is really, really frustrating. But we will carry on and we will keep working towards better outcomes. That’s my job. I take responsibility for the whole thing. It’s something I have got to work with.”
London
That’s one win in 42 trips to London.
An incredible showing of loyalty from the 1,112 fans in the away end on a Wednesday night.
At least they had the chance to give Nathan Jones some stick.
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