Trying To Make Sense and See Sense

In the first of three articles, Long Ball Football tries to make sense of our recent form:

Now the dust has settled on the debacle of Sunday we can perhaps think about the issues that led us here.

Firstly – and I will keep banging on about this until people see sense – our away form has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with our European campaign. I said this on the first blog I wrote on this site. If the apologists want to make that excuse then perhaps they can explain to me what the problem has been since 2008.

Secondly there is the question of the defence and goalkeeper. Asmir Begovic – again as I wrote on this blog – has clearly been worrying the coaching staff for a while. I saw him make many errors in his warm up at Arsenal, Andy Quy was obviously concerned. I wasn’t in the Reebok so early, but I am told by a mate that same thing happened there.

He hasn’t deserved his place for a while, but equally he hasn’t been able to trust the personnel in front of him, given the loss of form of some, the injuries, and the frankly baffling changes TP has made.

In many ways Begovic’s form has mirrored that of the team. I honestly think this hiding as been coming for a while. We have for too long this season – in the league games – have been papering over the cracks.

It is no exaggeration to say that we could have lost every game we have played. And I would further argue that we have only played well once – against Man Utd, and of course, if Ryan Giggs slots that chance home we would have been defeated in that game too.

Rather like that defeat at Forest in 2003 we must take this defeat as a wake up call. TP and his staff have to go back to the drawing board and work out what they need to tweak.

Tweak is the word I would use advisedly. We must remember that however shameful – and I again use that word advisedly – our display was on Sunday things aren’t THAT bad in general.

We are twelfth in the Premier League, we have been to the FA Cup final and we are all but qualified to the knockout stages for the Europa League. These are still great times to be a Stoke supporter.

We have a good squad, the best team we have had in my lifetime and some expensive international players, but that brings its own problems and its those problems the Club as a whole needs to sort.

More than anything though, anyone who describes Sunday’s loss as a “surprise” or “shock” is plain wrong. The surprise, however, would be if it wasn’t sorted out – fast.

 And in that respect, our next two games are absolutely massive. If we lose them both then its alarm bells time, if we get six points then the blip is over.