Life inside Mark Robins' Stoke City regime with high demands and expectations
Junior Tchamadeu believes he and his Stoke City teammates will benefit from Mark Robins’ high expectations and the work put in by his coaching staff.
Tchamadeu, who turned 21 in December, has been making his case to be first choice right-back this season and has just collected the club’s player of the month award – but he understands he still has a lot of work to do to fulfil his potential.
He has been enjoying getting to work with Robins and new assistants Paul Nevin and James Rowberry and is looking forward to what comes next, even if he insists he is not looking all that much beyond Saturday’s trip to West Bromwich Albion.
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“The manager has been very good to me,” he said. “He’s saying I’ve got a lot to work on, which is what I want to hear as well because I know there’s always room for improvement. Him and his staff are willing to help me improve and that’s the most important thing for me, learning every day and having staff who are willing to help me. I think that will be good for me and the team.
“It’s what we need as a team and a club. We need high expectations. We need to be demanding and to be demanding from each other as players and staff around the building. If you don’t have that you can’t progress. It’s important for us as a collective to have a demanding manager who will take no nonsense.
“He’s helped us to stay concentrating on the next game, the next session and made our focus to work hard for each other and the next game and getting results, which is what we’re here to do.”
He added: “(Robins has) got a lot of experience and he knows this division inside out. That is going to help us. We’ve got a young group and to have that experience is a big thing.”
Tchamadeu’s form has picked up over the New Year, with his full-back role tweaked first by then-caretaker boss Ryan Shawcross to be more aggressive and attack down the line rather than be expected to slip in as an extra centre-back.
Robins has taken the same approach and Tchamadeu thinks that’s probably playing to the strengths which persuaded Stoke to buy him from Colchester in the summer of 2023.
“I’ve enjoyed it massively to be honest,” he said. “I feel like performances have been good as a collective and we’re growing together, which is important for the season. We’re in a good place right now with growing confidence and we’ve just got to stick together and keep competing.
“I feel I’m able to give the team what I was brought in to do, in a way. I can use my attributes, use my strengths, which is getting forward from deep. That’s what my game has been about. Having that freedom in a sense is always going to help my game and I’m enjoying my football. I’m playing with confidence.”
Now Tchamadeu is being tasked with keeping up the standards he has set over the last few weeks.
He said: “I need to perform how I have been on a consistent basis. That’s the biggest thing for me. I’m taking it game by game and try to be a consistent player in this division and be a consistent player for the team. From there, you can move on and push on to the next target.”
