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Narcis Pelach's list of Stoke City demands as he thanks players and bosses for opening chapter
Narcis Pelach can see key traits emerging at Stoke City as he thanks the squad for buying into his blueprint.
Pelach, who was took over as head coach in September, went into this international break on the back of a run of three wins and four draws in his last eight league games. Stoke are now encamped in Championship mid-table but with growing belief they can get better as the season goes on.
Pelach has taken on a big project and has highlighted the importance of picking up wins in the here and now to make sure everyone around the club has confidence things are moving in the right direction – but it’s the players’ attitudes that he values most of all.
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“The most important thing for me is the belief and love of the players because they are the ones you send out on the pitch,” he said. “If you’ve got that then I think other things will come.
“Of course we need to build something big and I think we can but with these first few weeks it is clear to see what we wanted to do or what we said we were going to do: a complete team, a versatile team, not exceptional in any phase but know how to manage ourselves in each of the phases, strong at set plays, lots of energy, lots of togetherness, lots of belief, emotionally connected to the project.
“I think we’re seeing this and we’re getting there. We want to be a difficult team to get beat, that if you play against Stoke that it’s going to be difficult. We’ve lost one of the last eight so that tells you we are getting there, step by step.”
Stoke have scored game-changing goals from set plays in their last two home games, Bae Junho corners headed in by Ben Gibson.
Pelach has taken responsibility for the routines himself but doesn’t want to overcomplicate things at this stage, putting the focus instead on attacking the ball.
He explained: “We go to the ball believing that we can score. My set plays matter, it’s really simple, bit I believe in that but it’s paying off. We’re getting goals, important goals. We won three points because of a goal from a corner against Derby and we got another against Millwall, who are probably the second best team at set plays in the league with Derby the best. We scored against both of them.
“That’s what I want. I love set plays. I was a set plays coach years ago and I love it. I do it here. I didn’t employ a set plays coach because I want to do it myself. I enjoy that part of the game. There are a lot of things improve but I’m happy for the goal.”
It has been an important opening chapter of his time at the bet365 Stadium and he hopes it is the start of a long book.
“It’s been 50-odd days in the job now and I’ve enjoyed every single second,” he said. “I’m really happy to be here and to be part of Stoke. Hopefully it’s the beginning of something long because I don’t want to go anywhere else, I want to be here. I want to be working for this club.
“I want to take advantage of this moment too to say thank you to John Coates and Jon Walters because they were very brave to appoint me. Everything is going really well. We have the love of the players and that’s all I can ask. I’m very grateful to them, even the players who are not playing, for the way they have been with me and the staff. I’m grateful and happy and hopefully I can give more to them to help them become better players.”
