Stoke City were unacceptable pushovers in mid-week but I've seen something great in Nathan Lowe
We have seen two sides of Stoke City in the past week and they were chalk and cheese, encouraging and frightening. I left the Hawthorns last weekend with a spring in my step but then had to watch the Portsmouth game unfold from behind my settee.
At West Brom we saw a Stoke team that was organised and looked good in possession, recovery and defending. At Fratton Park players were pushed off the ball far too easily and lacked a competitive edge. Individual players weren’t strong enough. They looked weak.
First and foremost you’ve got to be able to compete before you consider anything else like possession and creativity. They did it at West Brom. In the first half we looked a decent outfit and in good hands while in the second we were ready to defend. Players were up for it.
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Then you go to Portsmouth with the record they’ve got at home recently and they’re third from bottom, only two points behind you. The first thing in your mind has to be to make sure you’re switched on for 90 minutes, ready to play with an urgency that shows you understand the importance of the fixture. Do your jobs early, give them no space, press the ball.
They were such soft goals. We didn’t deal with a long ball over the top for Portsmouth’s second and conceded a header at the far post without marking or defending correctly for the third. We were pushovers. It was weak and poor and, if I was Mark Robins, I would be a little worried.
I’d hoped we had seen a base for what was to come, to show at least the same in mid-week or even build on it. “Roll your sleeves up and get cracking. I know there are injuries but let’s see what we’ve got.” Instead it will have been a long coach ride home thinking about it.
He was let down badly. You have to put the work in off the ball and if they breakthrough it’s about recovery and last ditch challenges. It’s about having a never say die attitude to keep believing, keep going. All those ingredients are needed as the priority.
He’s right that it’s not an easy fix. You solve it by working hard on the training ground, setting out what you expect every day there and in every match. You show them in certain areas where lapses took place and make it clear that should never happen. That they are not acceptable. You have to make it compact so that if one player gets the brush off, another one is ready to step in and make sure the opponent doesn’t get any further.
It will be a test of all that today as Gary Rowett comes back to town. You know how his team will set up and, whatever the result this afternoon, he’s had a cracking start to life as Oxford manager – and has got them above Stoke in the Championship table.
They turn up here fresh from a win over a Luton side who have just come down from the Premier League and are finding it hard. Relegation can be hard and it can take a while to sort things out, particularly if you’ve been up for 10 years. Rowett had a couple of tough months after taking over at Stoke and August and September saw poor results – but then he had a very good October, November was good and December was decent… then he got sacked at the start of January.
There was a lot to sort out but it feels like we’ve mostly spent the six years since then adding to the problems. I can’t help get it out of the back of my mind to wonder what might have happened back then if he had stayed. I struggle to picture it not having gone better.
NATHAN Lowe took his goal very well last weekend but it was a chance he didn’t score that made me really sit up and take notice.
He’s willing and enthusiastic and he’s come on leaps and bounds thanks to his time on loan at Walsall. He took his goal really well, being in the right place at the right time with good body position and an instinctiveness you want to see around the six and 12-yard box.
He will work his socks off for 90-odd minutes and the big thing for him will be to learn how to save himself from unnecessary running, which sometimes he won’t realise he’s doing because of his honesty – and, if that’s a fantastic attribute to have. It’s only time and he’ll find himself getting into better positions more regularly because he’s clearly got a hunger to learn and he’ll understand more and more about where to be and when if the ball, defenders or teammates are in this position or that, what’s going to happen and what you can make happen.
Gary Lineker was the master of it. Sometimes it’s standing still, sometimes it’s walking, sometimes it’s making one, two or three dummy runs to move a centre-back around before a dart and boom, you’re in the spot to get that vital touch that somehow you’ve made look easy.
So yes, it was a super goal but it was the second chance Lowe had, just after half-time, when I got excited. He pulled off the shoulder of a centre-back, peeling away to the far post area to get on the end of a cross from Wouter Burger. He couldn’t quite make the contact he wanted but the play to get there was the work of a top striker. Keep it up!
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