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Stoke City top brass in need of thick skin as Narcis Pelach knows mitigation only stretches so far
Stoke City’s top brass need thick skin whatever happens next.
Narcis Pelach was appointed with conviction that he was the right man for a club that had become stuck fast in the bottom half of the Championship. The driving force was to stop being a team that won one, lost one. They believed the best way to do that was to install higher standards and raise expectations on the training ground and have a clear vision about how the team should play.
There has always been an acknowledgment that wins and encouraging performances are needed along the way to ensure enough support to carry out a long-term project. The noise and atmosphere during Saturday’s home draw with Cardiff made it clear that three wins in 16 league games – plus a rotten display against Cardiff – is not enough.
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Pelach and his captain Ben Gibson both admitted that they deserved the reception they received. Pelach's post-match interviews seemed to show he understood the urgency of the situation.
It was a miserable afternoon and it was obvious from the looks on the faces of chairman John Coates and sporting director Jon Walters in the directors’ box that they weren’t happy either.
But the hierarchy has to try to take emotion out of their analysis and continually weigh up whether they are on the right road, how much mitigation they can accept and how much belief they have in the decisions that they have made over the last few months. As long as it’s not working, they will get it in the neck whether they keep the faith or lose it.
There is a consensus that Stoke desperately need stability on the proviso that everyone is happy in the roots being laid.
Pelach is the eighth boss since 2018 and, of the giant rebuild and opportunity from the summer of 2023 when 19 players were signed to overhaul the squad, only one – Bae Junho – was in the starting XI just 16 months later. Not many clubs can go very far very fast unless they settle that kind of record down.
Financial fair play rules have forced them to rely too heavily on loans and young players – although those FFP rules are biting harder because when they had the chance to sign 19 players only one is…
There is a lack of physicality and players in their prime, not helped that Sam Gallagher, Bosun Lawal and Ben Pearson have spent pretty much the season so far in the treatment room.
Gallagher, however, did come with a warning about his injury record over the last couple of years while Pearson was in a series of hamstring injuries last spring which added to the questions being asked about the training regime. There was a show of faith in Lawal that he would be an important enough asset for the club to be patient during this time – but patience is thinner in the stands in December than it is in August.
Pelach is trying to massively change the tactical approach to be focused on space rather than the man and he’s talked about the challenges of doing this around a hectic fixture schedule without having laid foundations in pre-season. He can point to improvements that happened over time at Norwich but, in the here and now, that’s three games in a row when Stoke have gone from 1-0 up to 2-1 behind and he is being asked regularly about the amount of shots that his side is conceding.
He said last week: “I know that this can happen because it’s not the first time it’s happened in my career, when you change one defensive style to another. I repeat, one thing is not better than the other, one thing is not worse than the other, it’s just different but this is my way and the way I want going forward, that everyone defends, that everyone helps each other, that everyone stays together that you can see over these nearly three months, that the team behaves very compact and very structured.
“But then we have to find a way to be more aggressive. When you go from one thing to another, sometimes you can go to the extreme. This is what we have done. Now we have to try to rebalance it a little bit to win more duels, basically. You can be structured but if you lose a duel, it doesn’t matter how you are receiving a shot. We need to find a way to improve this.”
There would be less pressure now if Stoke had got more points against Queens Park Rangers or Preston North End and that surreal decision from referee Gavin Ward to disallow Junho's winner at Loftus Road is still haunting - but it's Pelach who is banging the drum for a no excuses culture.
There are plenty of examples of clubs who have benefitted from keeping their axe in its sheath at a time like this.
The radio phone-ins were full of Arsenal supporters calling for Mikel Arteta’s head in 2021 and Brentford fans weren’t happy when they won one of their first 10 under Thomas Frank. Frank was being asked if was confident he could turn it around in December 2018.
Then there are examples of clubs who have been determined to give a manager time and only delayed the inevitable, such as Nathan Jones or Alex Neil or Mark Hughes.
Stoke’s board are certainly on the more patient end of the spectrum – Steven Schumacher might disagree – but it is horrible for all concerned to be in this position again.
Gibson nailed it when he talked about the only way to get out of it with everyone intact, saying: “You work your way out of it and win football matches. That’s what we need to do, that’s clear. Then all of that changes and it can change quickly.”
Over to them, then.
