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After last season you’d have thought you’d wait 10-15 games before making such rash comments. I’ll leave it to someone else to keep the receipts on this.

Yes and no. Playoffs will be the target this season but if you still look at our squad, it’s still short of 2-3 players to be really considered anything close to automatic standard. I’m holding out on signing a marquee CM as intended with Stamenic. Likewise, there’s a need for a CB who...

Well, the forum’s annual tradition of overreacting is under way, again. We’ve made tactical tweaks and have players adapting to that, new teammates or even the league itself. 10 games is a useful barometer and even then it’s clear that Robins sets the team up to peak later in the season. It’s...

Agreed and they need to be players that are marquee signings. Definitely at CM and I’m in two minds whether or not the CBs we’ve got are good enough to be a Top 4 defence this season. Case in point being Binks. In time, he will develop into a solid CB but why is this signing seen to be...

The depth nor quality is there. Robins said we needed more quality in midfield and we’ve only added Rudoni to replace COH. Who, in the now, isn’t necessarily an upgrade on COH despite my belief that he’ll turn out to be a better player over time. We’ve added a lot of quality in our forward...

There’s a few sources, I might be out a % on tackles and probably over egged his interceptions. https://fbref.com/en/players/7b4a62af/Ben-Sheaf

Sheaf was in the top 98 or 99% of ball winning and interceptions in the championship last season. He is the ‘enforcer’. I said this multiple times last season, without Sheaf in midfield we look a lot worse. In fairness, Eccles didn’t start the game but you’d expect him to really step up this...

That’s a given, he won’t be shoehorned in. Sakamoto played better on Saturday but given it was EMC’s first game at Championship level, he did alright and will grow into the role more. After all, it took Sakamoto till October/November to have a real impact. There’s no reason other players can’t...

Hence why I think eventually, EMC-Simms-Wright will be our starting 3 upfront. Out of possession we could easily make it a 4-4-2 too which is a fashionable tactical idea atm.

In fairness, if you concede around 75m you need to come out and attack more which can leave you vulnerable to being picked off by teams. If you don’t kill games off, you run the risk of dropping points. Going into half time, I thought we’d be making Stoke pay for their inability to convert their...

You just have to accept that sometimes you have an off day. To share a snippet of a conversation I had with my old uni mate who is a Stoke STH, who said: Went on to say how he expected us to be in the playoffs. That’s because you can see the way we moved the ball in patches was really good...

More shots doesn’t necessarily equate to better team. The control of the ball was there in the second half but the incisiveness in creating chances wasn’t. On the balance of things, we were lucky to be 0-0 going into the break so we can’t have any complaints with the final result.

At risk of going into ‘off topic’ territory here, but looking at a lot of the areas rioting - they’re all ‘left behind’ places. To state the obvious, that’s not justifying disorder and violence. It’s easy to see why these communities are so angry. Coventry, for its sins, is getting better and...

First half, agreed. Second half we were the better team and Stoke unfortunately had one good opportunity and took it. So I don’t think we got it ‘completely’ wrong. Agreed on Simms being isolated, we made 1 or 2 direct passes to his feet in the first half. It didn’t help that the referee...

It’s a general warning to the team because the whole midfield and our wide players were too safe. In possession with their passes or dribbles and out of possession in the pressing. We missed Sheaf’s out of possession work with his interceptions and tackling.

I had a random exchange with a Stoke fan after the game, he was rambling about how it only takes ‘5 or 6 clowns’ to ruin everything. Before talking about the riots in Stoke-on-Trent centre before I needed to go… Which is all true and for those who went to the Euros, we enjoyed alcohol in the...

Rudoni looked good but agree that Eccles, Allen and Torp were sub par today. I won’t get too excited, it was one game and we didn’t play that well. Today really should be a wake up call to those saying the likes of Andrews, Obikwu and so on were good enough for cover. We 100% need a minimum of...

What was the jist of what he said?

Allen is a rotational player at best. I really don’t know why Eccles was benched, must have been a knock or not been 100%.

He defended well but his distribution was poor and put us under unnecessary pressure. He’s taking all the slack for his passing (rightly so) but the goal and a lot of Stoke’s threat came against the left hand side of the defence. We haven’t signed any new defenders this window and considering...