Mark Robins makes ‘mediocrity’ point as he plays Stoke City numbers game
Mark Robins makes ‘mediocrity’ point as he plays Stoke City numbers game
Mark Robins took heart from Stoke City’s performance as well as result in mid-week as he now tries to capture that rare beast of a back-to-back win.
Stoke were beaten at the death at Coventry last weekend after scrambling back from 2-0 down, but they responded with a hard-fought home win over Blackburn Rovers on Wednesday night courtesy of a first-half goal from Ali Al-Hamadi.
Now they are preparing for a Saturday lunchtime clash at Alex Neil’s Millwall knowing how valuable it would be to make it two wins on the spin to head into the international break. They have only won two league games in a row once this season, against Derby and Blackburn in early November.
Robins said in his pre-match press conference: “Really the manner of the performance is the thing you’re looking for because that is something you can repeat. You can see small shoots of recovery and when you get players start to come back performance levels start to go up.
“We’re not looking for mediocrity, we’re looking for elite and that takes time and an understanding of what is required for that and the work you have to do to get there and trying to get that to feel normal and be normal and have people driving that. That’s where you want to get to. It continues and just takes time.
“But because we’ve got players back that we need back – and we want everybody fit so things move quicker and there’s competition for places and people need to work really hard to get into the squad, never mind the team.
“Those things are really pleasing but the level of the performance the other night was pretty good. Certainly in the first half in possession we were pretty good. Out of possession we’re generally ok but when you come up against a side that is direct like that – and sometimes against Millwall we’ll face similar – to be able to deal that is key.
“There are different challenges in different games and this one will be different from last Saturday, for instance, in terms of the style. Millwall are a good side, they’ve got some good players and they invested quite heavily in January actually.
“It’ll be a tough game but it’s the game prior to the international break – I think we’ve got six players called up – and trying to get to that and give everything we possibly can to get back-to-back wins because that’s really important. They’ll be doing the same.
“Obviously one of my predecessors has taken the dug-out there and he’ll be doing as much as possible to get the three points for his team as I am for mine.
“It’s an interesting game but also one we can really look forward to and try to go again and get the three points.”
Level of performances are hard to quantify, certainly when compared to actual results which impact the league table.
Robins sounds like he understands it might annoy some people to reference underlying statistics but it was put to him that, never mind the back-to-back wins in November, Stoke have just played their first two games in a row when their xG was better than the opposition.
In fact, they have done that three games in a row, albeit it was only 0.6 vs 0.5 against Watford. It was 2.2 vs 0.9 at Coventry – which tallies with Robins saying it was a game he felt Stoke should have won, and 1.6 vs 0.6 against Blackburn.
Robins added: “It’s difficult talking about data when you lose games but the data suggested it’s going in the right direction so you have to keep doing what you know is right, helping the players be the best they can.
“It’s difficult when you have the circumstances we have had, when you’ve had injuries and the length of time players are out it takes a huge amount of time to get back. People look at it and think, ‘He’s fit now’ but it’s not that. They get fit and we have to use them probably before we should do.
“Normally you’d go, they’ve come back from injury, they’ve played some under-21s games but they’re not enough because the level is so different and they’ve got to get themselves up to speed in training as well as games but games are really just for practice to get back into rhythm. It takes a while and we’ve had that continuously.
“Those things are difficult both for the player because they really want to come back and hit the ground running and when they don’t hit the ground running it’s hard. They’re young men, to me they’re kids, but they’re young men and they’re trying to find their way through a career.
“But they’ve been brilliant, they’ve been fantastic, and we’ve spoken about seeing things coming to fruition. You can start to see the confidence. I think they’re brave anyway because of the way we ask them to play and they equip themselves in a way that means you can go and do certain things in games that give you an element of control in the games at certain times but generally they are trying everything they possibly can do to carry out the instructions. I say instructions, guidelines, principles, all of those things we’re asking them to do, they’re trying to do it.”
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