Mark Robins' Stoke City arrival leaves big Jon Walters unknown as new dynamic set to play out
By all accounts, Stoke City have made an excellent appointment in naming Mark Robins as their latest first-team boss. Many clubs were keen on Robins, but it was Stoke who convinced the 55-year-old to return to the game - and have been deservedly praised for doing so.
The former Coventry City man takes over from Narcis Pelach, who like Steven Schumacher before him, was Stoke’s head coach, not manager. All that has changed with the arrival of Robins, a traditional manager in every sense of the word who you would expect to demand an input into recruitment and the day-to-day running of the club.
Of course, Stoke also have a sporting director in Jon Walters, and it will be interesting to see what dynamic emerges between the two men in the coming weeks. It will certainly be a relationship forged in fire as Robins looks for the reinforcements in January that he needs to get the Potters on an even keel while treading a fine line in regards to the club’s FFP exposure.
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Walters will be able to guide him in that regard, but it is in the longer term that their relationship will be properly tested. The omens are good. At Coventry, Robins had a strong relationship with one-time CEO Dave Boddy, with both men very much on the same page when it came to rebuilding the Sky Blues from top to bottom. And one advantage Robins will have at Stoke is an ownership keen to see him succeed, something that was not always the case at Coventry before the Doug King takeover.
Andy Turner, the long-time Sky Blues reporter at CoventryLive, says of Robins: “He's never really worked with a sporting director, so it is not clear how that dynamic will work, but Robins is a smart guy who will get on with the hierarchy. After all, it's in his interests to have a strong relationship with Jon Walters in terms of building the club back up, particularly in the summer when Stoke are expected to start spending money again.”
As for Walters, the next few months will also be key after he was questioned over his gamble to replace Schumacher with Pelach.
Whatever the reasons for dispensing with Schumacher, that was Walters’ right as he assessed the best way forward for the club. But Pelach was the first head coach appointment on his watch, and as such he staked his judgement on backing an untried and unproven candidate. Get it right in those circumstances and you are a hero, but get it wrong and people will suddenly doubt you. That is the situation Walters currently finds himself in, especially with the "head coach" strategy also torn up in the wake of the Spaniard's dismissal.
That said, everyone is entitled to make a mistake. The trick is to not repeat it... a recurring theme at Stoke City in recent years. It is now up to Mark Robins to prove once and for all that managing Stoke City is not the impossible job many believe it to be. We wish him well.
