Yahoo News Only one thing surprised me about Stoke City's big call on Steven Schumacher
I almost dropped my manuka honey at breakfast time on Monday when the news broke that Steven Schumacher had left Stoke City. It wasn’t the news we were expecting to wake up to and the start of what has turned out to be a busy week.
But it didn’t take long, however, for the surprise to subside. It was the timing, more than the decision, which had caught me off guard. I thought about what I’d written on these pages after the West Brom game four weeks ago and that explains it all.
Players were evidently confused that day and so was everyone else in the stadium. Out of nowhere, and having gone through pre-season with a 4-3-3 system – and that had got him good results to end last year, Schumacher switched to wing-backs, with three centre-halves marking one striker. We were exposed out wide and there were so many in-game changes, including moving Josh Laurent to centre-back, and Ben Gibson was the only outfield player who finished in the same position as he’d started.
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From my experience over a career in football, that afternoon told me a million things. Sometimes you get a vibe, a feeling, that there are games at play other than the one on the pitch, especially when it was only a few days until the transfer deadline. It might have highlighted weaknesses in the squad at a crucial time in the summer window but it rarely strengthens your position. Maybe I’m just being paranoid but either way it didn’t bode well.
That match was on the back of a desperately disappointing second-half at Watford, when Stoke’s soft underbelly – that Ryan Shawcross spoke about needing fixing after the game on Tuesday – was tickled and kicked. It was a decent week going into the international break but when Stoke were then banged out against Oxford United, it was concerning.
The goal we conceded was a head scratcher. We should have stopped the ball coming over and then we didn’t deal with the cross at all. It’s something to fix near the top of Narcis Pelach’s to-do list. But we didn’t really seem like we had a plan of how to score either and, regardless of the changes in personnel that have happened since June, you’d expect to see more of a structure in how we were playing by this point.
You’d have hoped to have seen that develop in pre-season and although Jon Walters might not give much away with how he looks in the stand, there was frustration building even among supporters with how Stoke attacked against Crewe and Stockport.
It’s a shame. Schumacher had started well when he came in last December and immediately added a bit of steel, drawing three and winning two of his opening five matches before a run of indifferent results when it all got a bit sticky. He was analysing players in different positions and roles and there were lots of changes from week to week.
He was backed to come through that and ended the season well. The run following the last international break was encouraging and supporters got on board too. There was a positive atmosphere for a final day 4-0 win over Bristol City and everyone went into the off-season with a spring in their step. Achieving safety hadn’t been the priority nine months previously but it felt like a club moving in the right direction.
We should have built on that platform but there are too many questions. If there were major doubts that he was the right man to take us forward in the long-term, it is better to act now than to wait until there are protests. It is interesting times because there are a lot of matches to play, a lot of matches to make an impact.
And it’s obviously a change in direction. I’ll be fascinated by how Pelach’s influence shows as he does more work on the training ground. The hierarchy has obviously been doing plenty of homework because they knew exactly who they wanted and didn’t hang around in getting him in place.
He has learned from Pep Guardiola but it’s important to remember that Guardiola wouldn’t ask this Stoke squad to do the same things that he is asking from his players at Manchester City. But it is a squad with a decent balance and forwards who can get behind, get around teams and thread passes through, too.
So pick the best players that you’ve got available in their best roles in a system that suits them and is balanced. It’s as simple as that. That’s your starting point and we should set our ambitions high. Let’s see what happens next.
