depressing but the club needs to be shaken up top to bottom

[ted1965]

Yesterday sums up Stoke City at this moment chaos and confusion and absolutely no direction from the top, 12 yards of agony could condemn us to the Championship.
I don’t blame Paul Lambert, if you were offered the chance to manage one last time in the Premier League after failing miserably in your last few jobs outside the top flight you would grab it with both hands. He talks magnificently and instils hope in all who listen to his press conferences but the hard facts are he’s not the man to keep us up and never was. He has improved the defence but our failure to take what little chances we create are killing us off and the lack of a new striker in the window is a disgrace.

I am an optimist so I will continue to desperately hope for the best and some unexpected results that will scramble us clear of trouble. The reality is those at the top have slept walked this football club into this positon over the last 12 to 18 months, the lack of squad building the time they waited with it seems no real plan after Hughes departed shows complete unprofessional attitude towards how much trouble we were in.
The supporters are told we really tried to bring a new striker to the club in January but sadly we failed, do they expect praise and thanks. Every other club in our position tried and amazingly succeeded whether they get value for money at least they gave it a good shot. We apparently couldn’t even bring a loan player in to give the group a lift. It sends the message to the decent players we do have that it doesn’t matter to the owners whether we are relegated or not the better players will be sold and the supporters will be left with the dregs for a Championship battle.

The search for the new manager was a farce, QSF, apparently courted with 5 year plans and large budgets amazingly turned out to be Paul Lambert and the inability to capture a loan striker do the people in chargel of this club think supporters are so beaten down that they won’t react and know where the blame for this debacle lies. If Stoke City are relegated it will be down to the incompetence of those who control the club, the so called management backroom boys who are obviously taking orders from above. It won’t be down to Paul Lambert who is only the frontman of a failing structure. If we had just had a bad season and got relegated most supporters would say, that’s football and we can bounce back but the way this has been handled over the last 12 to 18 months is unforgivable being beaten is part of football and relegation is a fact for most football supporters but simply sitting back and allowing it to happen is totally unacceptable.
I am not giving up that has never been my way and I hope against hope we arrive at the last game needing to win to stay up because amazingly as depressing as this situation is we could easily win and survive but then what. I worry those in control will pat themselves on the back and say we were right so noting changes.

Paul Lambert will be allowed to stay in charge and Butland will be sold for good money and some of it will be handed back to the manager for a few cheap options and the madness will begin again. They will hope a couple of the youngsters will emerge and fill the gaps they refuse to spend money to fill.

The truth is whether we survive or not the club needs a shakedown and a fresh approach from top to bottom because at the moment it has a strong whiff of decay about it and it shouldn’t have happened this way.

I have asked before and worry that the real money broker at the club has little or no interest in the project anymore, she allowed her Dad to have his glory but for her time is up and it either stands or falls on its own merits now. If that’s the case then a shakeup is needed more than ever, new ideas on how to drive the club forward not penny pinching accountants only desperate for to show you can cling onto the Premier League with minimum outlay. Scholes and Cartwright have to be the first casualties of the chaos they have helped to create, their abject failure to sell this club are glaringly obvious. If by some miracle we survive Paul Lambert also needs be given a very huge thank you but sadly he also needs to be replaced some will scream how could we do this but being ruthless now is the only way of changing things. We need a younger enthusiastic manager who is given control and allowed to mould the club in his image. I don’t care whether he comes from Britain or Barbados this he has to be British garbage has to end he has to be the best man for the job that’s the only qualification any supporter gives a damn about. A forward thinking manager isn’t going to walk into Stoke City right now he will look at the set up and think all looks good on paper but it obviously isn’t right behind the scenes we need to change that view of this club again. The supporters love this club with passion but if this chaos continues how many will show up on a cold Wednesday night in the Championship against Millwall next winter I guarantee the ground won’t be close to full.

Okay rant over and I still hope we can somehow scramble out of this mess but next time we get a penalty please have a structure in place as to who is taking it that Is basic football a designated taker od a penalty kick and unless he’s off the field nobody else should be involved.

[davejohnno1]

Dream on. It's not going to happen.

[pottarius]

The mess they've made may make a fresh start pretty much impossible unless the club is sold - we have several high-earners who we'd almost need to pay someone to take off our hands. I have a nasty feeling hapless PL will still be in the dugout (likely with Charlie as an assistant) & feel he'll be struggling to get a tune out of Saido, Gianelli and hopeless Kevin. I am yet to be convinced the transfer team have all the players on relegation clauses, they couldn't get a relatively ok manager in QSF to accept the terms so I struggle to see them convincing the agents of Shaq, Bojan, Imbula etc

[SCFC92]

Cracking post and well put, I'm, beginning to tip over into relegation myself. It is going to be a long hard few months ahead I just hope a miracle happens and we manage it.

We are desperate for a new executive structure at the cub, and desperate for some investment.

Come on lads, chins up as best we can, lets try and enjoy what is potentially the last of our Premier Adventure for some time!

Goooarn Stoke!

[stokeykez]

Agree with your post. I still think Lambert appointment was with the what if we go down in mind.
The inability to buy a striker who has a presence is inexcusable.

We must be the only club who do not have a commanding centre forward, this will see us relegated

[pavel]

Staying up is a must but I fear it will be beyond us in our current parlous state. I totally agree about the need for a shake up and it has to be ruthless and root and branch and encompass all aspects of the club, commercial, football, management and most important a clear modern strategy fit for the very rich club we are at the moment.

But we are between a rock and a hard place, stay up and like you I think they will congratulate themselves and stumble on without learning any lessons. Go down and a few things may change but and its a big but, I don't think even then that any change will be of sufficient scale that is required.

Let's not kid ourselves the championship is very competitive these days and to get out we will have to spend as well as be managed very well on and off the field. There's a lot of money floating about there at the moment, lots of ambition and lots of decent teams.

I fear for us if we go down and fudge the major structural changes required and fail to modernise.

[sufolkstokie]

Feb 11, 2018 8:56:53 GMT stokeykez said:

Agree with your post. I still think Lambert appointment was with the what if we go down in mind.
The inability to buy a striker who has a presence is inexcusable.

We must be the only club who do not have a commanding centre forward, this will see us relegated

Issue is Lambert is not the manager to get us out of the Championship, let alone keep us in the Premiership. He did ok at Villa when the owner pulled the purse strings and took all the flack away from the owner - oh hang on

[Dutchpeter]

The sad thing is whether we get relegated or survive, there will no retrospective analysis with the benefit of hindsight, because supporters have been pointing out areas of concern for 18 months. This ‘self sufficiency’ ethos appears to have been introduced with the subtlety of the Chinese cultural revolution. All so avoidable.

[MadridStokie]

Surely the start of all this is a drive for self-sufficiency which Ted implies as a reason for where we are. That drive for self-sufficiency was clearly stated by Coates (Snr) himself and our approach to bringing players in reflects this. Unfortunately some of our bigger buys have been failures and I am still not really sure where the "blame" lies for that. As much as I don't like Scholes and Cartwright (their approach not as people, I don't know them !), one of their hands is surely always tied behind their back with self-sufficiency the clear aim.

I agree with Ted that Scholes and Cartwright have clearly not done a very good job at selling the club. But my question is how do you sell a self-sufficient club - what are we telling agents and players are our ambitions ? I cannot think of one self-sufficient club that has made it / survived in the Prem. Maybe Southampton have given it a good go, selling thier best players to fund new acquisitions. Even in the Championship, self-sufficiency would struggle as an approach, the very best we could hope for with such a model is mid-table ... look at how much Wolves and other top teams have spent / invested to be pushing for promotion.

So, I am not really sure at all where we go from here. Maybe even with self-sufficiency there is enough money available that the real issue is our inability to acquire the right players and then look at where the blame lies for that. I know I have said it on here many times before .... WHERE IS OUR PACE ??!!! Almost every team we play makes us look slow because they have at least 3 or 4 pacy players. New boys Bauer and Badou look quick but it is too little too late. I was at the match yesterday and watching Brighton break against us was embarrassing ... and then the difference of when we "broke" (if you can call it that). And as for a striker, well it is clear we have needed someone for a long time now and again the inability to recruit has failed us.

I hope against hope that we find a way to stay up because maybe the self-sufficiency approach will be questioned, challenged and a different approach found because I really worry for us in the Championship with that model. That said, it is not my money (gate money is a drop in the ocean) that would be needed to be invested year on year to maintain a good team balance and demonstrate ambition. Difficult times ...