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Double training, problem injuries and set-pieces - Inside Narcis Pelach's first 55 days as Stoke City head coach
Narcis Pelach referenced the number of days he’d been at Stoke City in a couple of answers either side of a draw with Millwall to head into the international break. He knew it had been 50 days last Thursday since he had been unveiled at the bet365 Stadium and it conjured the thought of him scratching a tally chart on his office wall. Managing Stoke, in the neutral’s imagination, might come with that kind of perception.
After all, one of the first questions for Steven Schumacher in his opening press conference last December had been about Stoke being a poisoned chalice. The first question for Pelach in September was just, why Stoke?
Out of context it reads almost like Pelach was being asked if he knew what he was in for. He was becoming the eighth boss since the start of 2018. Crucially he was also the first appointed by Jon Walters, who returned earlier this year as sporting director tasked with fixing the whole bigger picture.
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Stoke had only been through a major reset last year when Alex Neil rebuilt the squad and technical director Ricky Martin shook up pretty much every other department. Walters immediately made the point that he was going to do things differently. He didn’t believe he needed to throw everything out and start again but, if results aren’t always guaranteed, standards should be.
“It’s not my way or the highway,” Walters said back in April, “but I will hold everyone to account at the standards I expect at Stoke City. It’s not a club that wants for anything but the standards have got to be at the very, very top. I expect a lot from myself, I really drive myself, and I expect a lot from everyone around me.”
He expanded on that in the close season.
“Let’s be honest, it’s been a graveyard for players, a graveyard for managers,” he said. “We’ve not done well over the past few years, let’s be perfectly honest about it. We’ve underperformed with where we’ve finished over the past seven years. It’s been frustrating from the outside to watch. But now I’m inside the building it’s my job to change that, to raise the standards back to where they should be. It should be Premier League standards.”
He added: “You should have Premier League standards full stop. I’m always on about discipline. People sometimes see discipline as a dirty word but I’ll give you the freedom to do whatever you want to do. If you want to learn the guitar, if you practise every day you’re going to be able to play the guitar. You need discipline to do it. It’s the same as a player. You need to do it every day, your standards need to be right.
“If your standards are low and how you treat people, how you are around the place, if you’re late or if you’re sloppy… how you do anything should be how you do everything. I’m big on that. Do things right across the board, how you live, how you work, how you treat people. That’s your standards, that’s your base.”
Apologies for repeating all that but it’s probably the most important quote of the year at Stoke.
So Walters has been ruthless if things haven’t met the expectations he has for Stoke City as a seven-day-a-week operation, trying to shake out of the win one, lose one déjà vu that condemns a club to bottom half finishes.
The proof, ultimately, will come with results and league tables over the next few years, but there is no doubt that Pelach is on the same page with his demands – and if he hasn’t carried players with him through those opening 50-odd days then they are doing a good job of pretending otherwise.
Pelach brought in double training sessions during previous international breaks as he tried to lay down his foundations and fundamentals.
Stoke have had a recent history of too many injuries so he has put a massive new focus on nutrition and body fat. If bodies have to be treated carefully during an intense period of fixtures, he has been making use of the video room for extra work. Then he’s taken the chance to reward the non-internationals with time off this week.
It has been a balance of not trying to change too much too quickly and there have been reflection meetings along the way to make sure that players have understood everything they’ve been told. Senior players are helping with feedback too.
“I think I’m really demanding but I give players the chance to talk,” said Pelach. “We have some experienced players and they help a lot in that process, like Ben Gibson, Frank Fielding, Enda Stevens, Jack Bonham. They can communicate, they ask about any doubts they have and I’m in a position to talk, as well as Paul Clement, Dean Whitehead, Alex Morris too. They are all there to try to help the squad.
“It’s a process. It’s not something we can do in three days. But they are all listening. Bae Junho is learning, Million Manhoef is learning, they are all learning, for example, how to prevent the goal we conceded against Bristol City from a quick corner when we could have very easily stopped a quick restart. They want to follow a responsibility they have been told so no one went there to stop it.”
The first six weeks were about driving home the identity that Pelach has in mind for Stoke. Gradually his coaching team have been going into more detail about the next steps and what is expected in terms of relationships between individuals and units on the pitch and what he called ‘different tactical tools’.
He has taken the responsibility himself for coaching set pieces rather than have a specific set piece coach, and it will be interesting to see if Stoke can echo the success Huddersfield had from Sorba Thomas's corners when they reached the 2022 play-off final. Gibson has scored from Junho set pieces in the last two home games.
Stoke are expected to run harder than everyone else and the physical stats, Pelach has said, have gone through the roof.
Anything can happen next in the Championship – Stoke are six points off the play-offs and four points above the bottom three after pretty much a third of the season – but the bottom line for this year seems to be make sure that everyone is confident that this is a club clear it is going in the right direction and knows how to make the next step forward.
Pelach said: “I came here with a plan. I didn’t come here to observe and see and then create a plan in terms of methodology and principles of style of play. The way I want to approach training sessions, how to teach players in meetings, this is something I’ve planned before and wasn’t going to change. Now it’s time to do steps, to go more into details, to follow the plan but to go quicker into other things without losing our perspective on the basics. That’s the biggest thing this season. We have to be very focused on the basics and the general approach of the game.”
He added: “I think we’re in a building moment. Of course I’m very ambitious and I want to win all the games we can. I show that just by going game-by-game. I don’t look at any target in the table, I just focus on the next game because that’s what we can control. I want the team doing exactly the same and then we will see what happens.
“I am also realistic. I know where we are at the minute and I want to build a squad that is strong, that they know how to play the game, that they understand the style of play, that they understand the methodology, that they know what the league is, that they know how to manage games. Then at some point we will be strong enough to do additions that take us to the next level.
“Now is the moment to go hard, to fight a lot and to bring this team quickly into a much better place.”
