Has Narcis Pelach taken on impossible job or can he drag Stoke City 'kicking and screaming' into new era?
So Narcis Pelach is the latest man tasked with dragging Stoke City out of the doldrums, the sixth man in the dugout at the bet365 Stadium in the last six seasons since the club suffered relegation in May 2018.
His appointment was confirmed yesterday as the Stoke hierarchy moved quickly to replace Steven Schumacher, who was sacked a couple of days before.
Gary Rowett was the man first appointed to lead Stoke back to the top-flight at the first time of asking, and was handed plenty of parachute payments cash to help accomplish the task. When he failed, Stoke first went down the “young, coming man” route by giving the job to Nathan Jones, who never got close to replicating his success with Luton Town in the Potteries.
Then came Michael O’Neill, the tried and trusted Northern Ireland manager who finally looked like he might crack the “impossible job” until the wheels fell off after much tinkering with the Stoke squad to keep within EFL player spending rules.
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Again the axe fell, with Tried and Trusted Mk II in the shape of former Norwich, Preston and Sunderland boss Alex Neil, ushered in. Lots of new players arrived, lots of backroom staff and key personnel were shipped out. Result? Another manager exit.
Then came a shift in strategy. Schumacher, a young and thrusting fledgling boss with a promotion on his CV at Plymouth, became head coach rather than manager, working with a sporting director in club legend Jon Walters. The scouser kept Stoke up last season and was five games into this season when his efforts were not deemed sufficient to keep his job.
Frankly, the decision to ace Schumacher so early into the new season baffled plenty of Stokies. After all, far worse had survived far longer in the job in days gone by, and it looked like Schumacher had not been given a real chance to prove his worth. Whatever, he has gone and Pelach, a coach with experience of working under Pep Guardiola and Marcelo Bielsa, is the latest Stoke City "Messiah".
So what faith do supporters have that the former Norwich City first-team coach with little actual managerial experience will prosper when so many before have failed? In fact, is managing Stoke City the “impossible job”?
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That is the question we posed our fans’ panel as they digest the news that Stoke are going international in their quest for some semblance of success after six successive bottom-half Championship finishes and more flirtations with relegation to the third tier than is comfortable.
Tasked with coming up with an answer are Rob Doolan, Jon Owen, Richard James and Dave Bithell…
Rob Doolan: Why has managing Stoke City become the impossible job? Primarily, it's because the club failed to move with the times.
For too long Stoke, hoping to stumble across the next Tony Pulis, remained a manager-driven club, with the power for almost all footballing decisions resting with the man in the dugout, an emperor given the freedom to mould the club in his image. That has proven a road to hell paved with good intentions - the managers have been backed generously by the owners, but when it has gone wrong - from Rowett onwards - the lack of a clear succession plan or identity has plunged the club deeper and deeper into a vicious circle.
The habit of appointing a new manager almost the polar opposite of the previous one meant constantly ripping everything up and starting from scratch, the new man almost invariably lumbered with an expensively assembled squad who didn't fit the style of play he wanted to implement.
The pressure of trying to return Stoke to being even play-off contenders seems to have been another factor. The second results started to wobble, each post-relegation manager cast aside what had worked for them in the past, from Nathan Jones abandoning his much-vaunted diamond formation, Michael O'Neill becoming oddly wedded to an unfamiliar wing back system or Alex Neil's trumpeted high energy football never materialising. Steven Schumacher fell victim to that too - the front foot football he promised giving way to running scared from Oxford United.
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Schumacher, though, the club's first Head Coach, may well be a victim of the process finally working as it should. In the Director of Football model the club has finally embraced, the head coach should ultimately be but a cog in a well-oiled machine. There should be an ethos in place above them, a squad already built at all levels with a certain way of playing in mind.
Narcis Pelach, from most accounts, has a preferred style of play that suits this group of players. It sounds like the kind of long-term planning that has worked for the likes of Brighton and Brentford - and will hopefully drag Stoke City kicking and screaming into the 2020s.
Jon Owen: I remember reading an opinion from an opposition supporter around the 2010 time which essentially said Stoke were a club many lower league sides should aspire to become. Steady owners, a manager who had been given time, money and patience. Players who made a difference. Everything about us appeared stable.
You then arrive at today, and while I'd still lean against us being called a basket case, we're now onto our seventh manager/head coach since the start of 2018. Somewhere along the line we've gone horribly wrong. If you pinpoint an exact moment, I'd say when Marko Van Ginkel's shot hit the post at Anfield in the semi-final of the League Cup way back in 2016. It felt like a switch had been flicked and the steady path we'd been on suddenly took a nosedive.
The shock reaction which came following Steven Schumacher's sacking earlier this week, both from supporters and those outside the club, appears fair. That said, it's difficult to completely disagree with the sacking too, especially given our very average start and, more worryingly, the poor performances which had become a recurrent theme of his short tenure.
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Anyone who thinks Lyndon Gooch should be part of a Championship attack, especially given who the club bought in the summer, is always going to deserve criticism when things go awry. I wasn't quite at the firing him point, but I'd also say I don't think he could have had any real complaints. The football hadn't particularly improved from Alex Neil.
Our managerial appointments seem to differ with every change, which certainly hasn't helped us gain any sort of consistency. Unbalanced squads, combined with poor recruitment, are also high on the list of why it's gone so wrong so quickly.
We're now desperate for a period of stability, an uneventful yet progressive campaign where we can start to see green shoots, rather than any hope getting trampled almost as quickly as it arrives. Chairman Jon Coates and sporting director Jon Walters have taken a huge gamble in appointing Narcis Pelach. It is one we desperately need to see work, otherwise I'm not sure where we go next. The Spaniard isn't someone I'd heard of until Monday, but I am really hoping we've come across a gem who can bring some good times back. And a bit of stability, too.
Richard James: Managing Stoke is far from an impossible job, but it is not straightforward. After six pretty woeful seasons there is a lot of pressure to turn a tide that has swept through the club and left turmoil in its path.
The previous incumbents have allowed their vision to be clouded and not had the courage of their convictions. A good manager needs to be able to adapt, but they also need to believe in their own methodology and not deviate at the first sign of trouble or dissent.
Our club is a great one, with an ownership that is prepared to back whoever they appoint and provide the tools and facilities to do a really good job. Any manager lucky enough to get the gig should be proud and feel fortunate to be at such a stable club, but they also need to stamp their own authority and become the focal point of the club, something none of the manager’s since relegation have really done.
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There is expectancy from within the fanbase, but it is not the evil spectre of doom hovering over the head coach that it is made out to be. We are very patient and have been for several turgid seasons, and any new gaffer will have a fiercely loyal support behind them as long as they can actually give us some of the fundamentals that Steven Schumacher promised but didn’t really deliver.
We want to be hard to beat. We want to see players putting their bodies on the line, winning 50-50s and running the hard yards. But then, after earning the right to play, we want to see some attacking football and plenty of goals. It’s not rocket science but managers generally try to make it so by over complicating things.
So give us a team to be proud of, move us up the table gradually and you will be loved. Make the same mistakes as previous appointments and you’ll be lucky to see the season out!
Dave Bithell: For years the Stoke City hierarchy have gone for British managers. As we know, football has moved on and tactics are no longer the traditional 4-4-2. Tony Pulis was the last of a dying breed.
When you look at the top teams, especially in the Premier League, all of the so-called top six managers, with the exception of Eddie Howe at Newcastle, are non British. So is the tide about to turn at Stoke with the appointment of Narcis Pelach?
A forward-thinking Spanish tactician who has learnt his trade in Spain would bring a different approach to things that we have seen in recent years. Yes, he hasn't got experience as a head coach, but neither did Enzo Maresca or Mikel Arteta before going on to impress at Leicester and Arsenal. Jose Mourinho was famously Sir Bobby Robson's interpreter at Barca in his early days. So Pelach has to start somewhere and ST4 is his first major destination.
The fans are a bit closer connected to the club since the appointment of Jonny Walters last season as he understands what it means to he part of Stoke City. As such, we fans have got to get behind the new manager.
Personally, I thought Steve Schumacher was doing that, but obviously the powers that be at the club saw something behind the scenes that didn't feel right. Maybe playing a wing-back in a centre midfield position was one strange decision too many.