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'I don't think that at all' - Every word from Narcis Pelach's bumper pre-Burnley press conference
Stoke City are straight back into action this weekend with a tough home game against promotion-chasing Burnley. Narcis Pelach took a break from his preparations on the training ground to preview what is a big test at the bet365 Stadium (Saturday, 3pm).
A difficult game for Stoke against a Burnley side which is flying high at the moment?
Narcis Pelach: They have very good players first of all. You have to start with the most important thing and that’s always the players. They have an unbelievable squad, just down from the Premier League, they’re among the favourites to win promotion and it’s working well for them. Of course they are going to be there and they have just set a record in Championship history as the first team to concede as few as six goals in the first 17 games. That’s never been done before so it’s a hard game.
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When you see the games they play, they don’t give away chances. Opponents aren’t getting shots on target, they’re keeping clean sheets and they’re very, very, very solid. They keep the ball as well so they give you nothing, basically. We will need to be very clear in the way we do things because this is a different game, different opponent, different level of opponent. I will tweak things a little more than usual, maybe, in order to counter the opponent. It’s a tough game but I’m excited as well because I see it as a challenge, an opportunity for us to try to do something special.
Burnley will be seen as clear favourites to outsiders. Does that take the pressure off at all?
Not to me. Not to the pressure I put on myself. I do that no matter where we go or who we play. I want to do well, I want my team to be organised and to have a game plan and to play with energy and a great level of emotion, but also a good level of understanding. There is always pressure going into a game but that’s just what I put on myself.
For the team, maybe for a young team, there are less expectations because it’s tough and a lot of people might expect them not to win against Burnley and maybe that helps but I’m not going to talk to them about this because it’s not what I believe in. Maybe other coaches would use that, maybe, I don’t know. I just see a football game, no one is unbeatable. We know they are doing very well and they are on a great run with great players but it’s just a football game.
I feel there is something to take and we need to go for it. We need to operate with ideas, knowing exactly what we want to do and we will need to execute that at the best level. I’m excited.
We’re coming from a game when we were not at our best, we were not good, but you get games like that in the Championship and we don’t need to make things bigger than they are because it’s a point, a clean sheet, we’re five unbeaten and we go on to the next one. It’s Burnley and why not, it could be a great afternoon.
Stoke have lost one in 10 but not got the points you might have hoped – yet it is an important skill in this league not to lose?
I think we got nine points out of 15 so I think if you look at the form table from the last five games we’re probably quite high. Nine out of 15, I would take that all the way along and not losing, of course, winning two and drawing three. But the thing is I don’t see it as a positive. My brain is thinking that against Millwall we could have won, at QPR we could have won. It’s fair to say that if everything goes to plan against Millwall and the referee does his job we win the game and at QPR we already did everything to win it but he decided to whistle. Even in that scenario we’re in a good place but it could have been better and that’s what I want the team to see.
I want the mentality to build something ambitious. I’m not talking about finishing eighth or ninth because Stoke never finished higher than 14th in the last seven years. I’m talking about the mood and creating the feeling that it is difficult to play against Stoke City because they compete. ‘Maybe they have a bad afternoon but they run and they run and they run.’
You can see a team like Sunderland this season. Nobody expected them to be there but when you see them playing, they run and they run and they run. What they cannot solve with tactics or ideas they solve with runs. The Championship has a lot of this. That’s why I always talk about how important it is to play with emotion. Sometimes we do it better, sometimes we do it worse but we are always there, we don’t have deep downs. We can have a bad game but we still compete. We got a clean sheet, we did lots of things well in defence but we did lots of things wrong in attack. That’s why we didn’t score but that’s why we didn’t concede.
There are positives. Everyone was really disappointed after Preston and that tells you, ‘Ok, we’re not happy with this, we’re on the same page, players and coaches all think the same – we have to do more.’
But Preston are a tough team in the Championship. They are never relegated, not promoted but a good Championship team. They make things hard for you.
Do you have to increase the speed in how you attack?
We had a long meeting yesterday. We gave them a day to reflect and think and rest mentally because we’ve had a lot of days in and then in that meeting I basically said that we had been sloppy and slow offensively. We never got momentum. Preston wanted that game. They slow things down, they don’t want the ball in play, they walk into corners, they take every throw-in very slowly. They can play as they want and football can be played in many ways, I respect everything, but they did this with experienced players and we couldn’t counter that because we didn’t pass the ball well, we didn’t pass the ball with enough accuracy, we took extra touches and slowed down the action. So what I did with the team was to show it all. We stayed here for an hour watching all the actions that were not good enough. So it was slow and sloppy but then we showed them what we meant, it wasn’t just the message. Show the clips. So players know and know we need more.
But, as well, you play, you play, you play and you get sloppy sometimes in your mind, not even in your legs. I think we were sloppy in our decision making and we were also sloppy in our legs.
We have been playing lots of games and we are young. The difference between the experienced player and young players is that young players find it harder to sustain performances. They go high, high, high, high and you see something unexpected and then down, down, down and you say, ‘Woe, what a young player we have here…’ and then three weeks later, ‘Where is this young player?’
It happens, they are learning how to be consistent. When you get players 27, 28, 31, who have been playing for years, they can give you a 6.5 or 7 in every game because they have been playing many years and they have that composure.
We are building something. We cannot get too excited when things are going well but we cannot get too down when things are not going well because it’s going to be a long journey until we get something really solid and we can really win more than we lose in the Championship. It’s a tough league. We’re in a good place, we’ve lost one in 10 and that’s something good, we’re getting some stability in terms of results but it’s hard to be always perfect – but the demands have to be for perfection.
Can you see improvements in the squad you inherited?
I think there has been improvement in players and players know they can play this style in a more reliable way than the first two or three weeks I was here and we have made steps forward but of course there are many, many more to go. Are we there? No. I don’t think that at all. There are moments in games when we lose composure, we are in shape but we lose control. I want more control, I want to feel more safe sometimes. I think there are moments in games we can control – but we’ve conceded three goals in the last five games and two of them were own goals, one being something very strange between Ben Gibson and Viktor Johansson and there was a set play. We haven’t conceded in open play in five. We are getting solid, step by step, and we want to be hard to beat. Maybe it is not always aesthetic but it is effective and that’s what football is about. If you want to do something you have to do something solid. We are starting the house from the foundations.
First of all you want clean sheets and to give your keeper a chance to save shots. This is something I believe in. You need to give your keeper a chance. You don’t want one-v-ones against your keeper or open goals, you want Viktor to have bodies between the shot. We will concede shots because we defend the space but we put a lot of bodies between the shot and our goal so we always give a chance to our keeper and we have a good shot stopper so it works. It worked at Huddersfield, it worked at Norwich, it worked at Girona. It will work at Stoke, I’m completely sure.
Are you confident you can improve the team in the transfer window if you can get the players who you want?
The first thing is that January is not the best opportunity to do that, the best opportunity is the summer. The summer is a much better market and in January there is a danger you could financially compromise a club if you’re rushing decisions, the players available are not always the best options. But I won’t complain or have an excuse that I didn’t have that chance (last summer). It came as it came. We have to try to do something that gives us the chance to build for the summer, that we don’t compromise what we want to do in the summer. That’s very important.
But we’re on the same page with Jon (Walters). We know what we want to do, the positions we want to bring and if we can do a couple of players that will bring us closer to being in an even better position in the summer, we will do it. But I really feel we need to do something, more options. The players who are playing lots of minutes need to feel that someone new is coming as well and they need to give more.
And it’s the Championship, you cannot play with the same players all the time otherwise you will get injuries and if you have injuries you can’t win games. We have been a long time now without Sam Gallagher, who is such a big player for us, and we’ve still managed to do well but Sam needs to come back, Bosun and Ben Pearson need to come back, Gooch needs to come back and then in January we will need to be open minded to do business as well.
Will you have to freshen it up against Burnley?
Yes, a little bit maybe. We are going to see how the team is today (Friday) and then decide. It’s important to be fresh and the other day we were not fresh. Mentally and physically we need to be at the best level because if we’re not, the game is tough. We need to be at our best level and need to be ruthless when we have a chances. We will not have many, perhaps, because Burnley don’t concede many and we need to be ready for any we can get.
Scott Parker has spoken about the Stoke crowd and you will know how they can support you – and also show their disapproval if the team isn’t playing how they want. How important can they be for Stoke in this game?
The crowd plays an important role but I always feel the crowd is good to the team. That’s very nice. The lads feel the energy from them. As soon as we give a little bit, they give back. That’s the energy and what makes the place special. You don’t need to give much to get that. They are not expecting a thousand passes and a great action before they cheer you, they will cheer your runs, energy and tackles. That is always more doable, it depends on willpower, not just reliant on talent. If you can give that, even better, everyone wants talent – but they are expecting work rate, hard work, passion, energy. That’s something that is always in our hands.
On Tuesday we couldn’t get momentum because games are complex. It’s not always easy and we were not at our best and we have to take it. No excuses. I was demanding to the players after the game, I was demanding to them in the meeting, I had to say things that are not easy to take but it is what it is – and I’m the first one who is responsible. If it’s not a good game, it’s not a good game and we cannot say the opposite to make up things because we don’t grow if we do that.
Now we have another opportunity, three days later against a good team and they know maybe if there are less expectations they will be cheered more so take it – and give it. It’s a great game. Apart from being a challenge, if you win that one, you get more people on board, more people believing. It’s a great opportunity and a football game, there’s always something and we will have our moment, I’m convinced about this.
You have three players on four yellow cards and two matches left before a five-card amnesty. One more booking for Andrew Moran, Ben Gibson or Ben Wilmot and they will have a one-game ban. Does that worry you?
No, not really. I knew Wilmot but I didn’t even know Gibson or Andy because my staff are on top of it and know I don’t want to know because I want to think about my best line-up for the next game. They come to me and talk about it but I say the most important game is the next one. It doesn’t really affect me. There are three points to fight for and I want those three points. If afterwards you tell me that those three players can’t play in another game then we will play other players. That’s why you have a squad. There are players who are not playing who I am convinced will do well when they come in and they just need to wait for their moment. The most important thing is the next one.
How is Enda Stevens and what’s the latest injury news?
I think Enda stopped himself on time because he knows his body. I think he’s better than expected. We’re going to assess him now but probably he will be available. I cannot be 100 per cent sure about it until we’ve made that assessment but it’s better than expected and hopefully he can play tomorrow and if not he will be available for the next one.
Lynden is with the team and available for selection. I will have to consider if he will come to the game or he will wait or maybe he can make an impact later on. But he’s available and that’s good news because it’s another option and another player who can help.
