[Archived] Stoke Vs Rovers

[CrazyIvan]

It shows we were utterly rigid and had no width.

The heat maps are instructive- you can see what Stoke were doing when in posession of the ball whereas Rovers' complete team heat map looks like spotted dick with not enough currants.

Taken together, it looks like the players didn't really know what they were doing,

Actually, it's quite instructive as to how Stoke are fairly limited in how they play. They were just much more effective at it than us.

[philipl]

Stoke identified weaknesses and executed a game plan to exploit them.

They only needed to be fairly limited to win 3-0 and hand out a right thrashing on the balance of play.

Rovers had no effective game plan and then no effective counter-measure when the opposition were ripping us apart. As we saw at Everton and Fulham as well. The players were not good but assuming those heat maps and average location maps reflect our players doing what they were told to, the scoreline was Pulis 3 Allardyce 0.