Stoke City v Rovers (a) Sat. 19th Dec. 3pm

[TheRoversReturn]

5 hours ago, Bigdoggsteel said:

Ya, but what Stoke do is way more grim than we played under Hughes or Allardyce. What would their fans be singing if they were watching them? 

Look,as I said , if we played it , it would be all about the result and they are currently the ones outside the play offs on goal difference. We aren't too far behind though 

Selective memory there. It's not more grim than we played under Allardyce or Hughes in their first seasons with the club. Then, it was all about survival. Heck, under Hughes we got the nickname of "Blackeye Rovers" and under Allardyce many fans complained that we were awful to watch.

I'm not sure how bad Stoke were to watch. It's become exaggerated through our frustrations about being so easily kept at arms' length. We were far worse to watch in our win over Rotherham and won unfairly. They have an injury crisis even worse than ours, scored early and were in the lead pretty much all game. There was nothing fortunate about Stoke's victory over us, unless we say our rank defending for the goal was fortunate. 

Edited December 24, 2020 by TheRoversReturn

[Bigdoggsteel]

On 24/12/2020 at 22:46, TheRoversReturn said:

Selective memory there. It's not more grim than we played under Allardyce or Hughes in their first seasons with the club. Then, it was all about survival. Heck, under Hughes we got the nickname of "Blackeye Rovers" and under Allardyce many fans complained that we were awful to watch.

I'm not sure how bad Stoke were to watch. It's become exaggerated through our frustrations about being so easily kept at arms' length. We were far worse to watch in our win over Rotherham and won unfairly. They have an injury crisis even worse than ours, scored early and were in the lead pretty much all game. There was nothing fortunate about Stoke's victory over us, unless we say our rank defending for the goal was fortunate. 

You're not sure how bad Stoke were to watch? Did you not see the game? We were never than negative under Hughes and even under Allardyce. Being "black eye" rovers is a very different thing than getting every player behind the ball for 83 minutes of a game. 

We were worse against Rotherham?  No we werent. We played fair more football, we just didn't score til late on. If you're talking pure entertaining footballwise , Stoke are putrid. Now the results v entertainment is a completely different debate 

[roversfan99]

2 hours ago, Bigdoggsteel said:

You're not sure how bad Stoke were to watch? Did you not see the game? We were never than negative under Hughes and even under Allardyce. Being "black eye" rovers is a very different thing than getting every player behind the ball for 83 minutes of a game. 

We were worse against Rotherham?  No we werent. We played fair more football, we just didn't score til late on. If you're talking pure entertaining footballwise , Stoke are putrid. Now the results v entertainment is a completely different debate 

That Stoke game was one game though. One isolated game in which they scored early on and managed the game, factoring in numerous absentees and a hectic schedule to get the win whilst being in full control throughout. Its not fair to judge their style in general on that one game.

[TheRoversReturn]

17 hours ago, Bigdoggsteel said:

You're not sure how bad Stoke were to watch? Did you not see the game? We were never than negative under Hughes and even under Allardyce. Being "black eye" rovers is a very different thing than getting every player behind the ball for 83 minutes of a game. 

We were worse against Rotherham?  No we werent. We played fair more football, we just didn't score til late on. If you're talking pure entertaining footballwise , Stoke are putrid. Now the results v entertainment is a completely different debate 

I don't even know what we're arguing about here anymore.

Stoke were in the relegation zone when O'Neill took charge. Since then, he's got them five point ahead of us while they've had a far worse injury crisis than us. When they played us, they go the goal then kept us at bay for the rest of the game to take three comfortable points. They also had a nice little cup run in which they competed well with Spurs.

So they played "putrid" football against us, did they? So what? I think we've been putrid with little payback on occasions. With no result.

Good for them. 

[Bigdoggsteel]

3 hours ago, TheRoversReturn said:

I don't even know what we're arguing about here anymore.

Stoke were in the relegation zone when O'Neill took charge. Since then, he's got them five point ahead of us while they've had a far worse injury crisis than us. When they played us, they go the goal then kept us at bay for the rest of the game to take three comfortable points. They also had a nice little cup run in which they competed well with Spurs.

So they played "putrid" football against us, did they? So what? I think we've been putrid with little payback on occasions. With no result.

Good for them. 

I think fair play to them. What I'm "arguing" about was that we were never that negative against a similar placed team under Hughes and Allardyce. It's a style of football they play that I will be very interested to see what chants their fans sing whenever they get back into the ground. I just think its so negative that you need to be getting top 6 to put up with it for more than a season. Parking the bus from the 6th minute, against us, come on that's a very specific way of playing. 

Our brand of shite is uniquely frustrating to us, I'm sure a neutral would find us more entertaining to watch than Stoke. 

As I said though,fair play to them, I would have no issue with it if we were top 6 come the end of the season. 

Edited December 27, 2020 by Bigdoggsteel