The Away Day Blues – Just Why Are We So Bad On The Road?
Of the 29 points that Stoke have amassed in the Premier League so far this season, just four have come away from the Britannia Stadium. Aside from draws against Liverpool, Wigan, Newcastle and Aston Villa, we have lost all our away games in the league, eleven in total. This is clearly a very worrying trait as we strive towards Premier League survival, so I’ll take a look at just why it happens.
Long faces are an all too common sight away from home
Obviously, the quality of the opposition we are facing in their own back yards is a factor. Few people would expect a struggling team like Stoke to gain anything from an away trip to a club in a European position, such as Everton, who sure enough, we lost 3-1 to on Saturday at Goodsion Park. This can be partially explained by the fact that Everton, an established top-half Premier League club simply have better players than Stoke. To an extent this is true, but then why do we continue to compete with these clubs at home, yet capitulate to them away? A good example of this is our games against Manchester City this season. Away from home we were thoroughly outplayed, losing 3-0, but we were able to claim a deserved 1-0 victory over them at the Britannia Stadium just three months later, despite playing the majority of the match with just ten men.
One explanation for our far superior performances at home is the quality of support given to Stoke players by the Britannia Stadium crowd. Scientifically proven to be the loudest in the league, and often cited as a twelfth man, the Stoke support must, to an extent lift the home players, resulting in them increasing their levels of performance on the pitch. On the whole, the atmosphere at home matches this season has been excellent, boisterous yet near exclusively supportive and positive. There was, however, a period from November into December where the atmosphere felt different, far less supportive and more pessimistic and quick to criticise. This period co-incides with our worst run of home results and performances of the season, with a barely earned win over West Brom, defeats at the hands of Manchester United and Derby and lukewarm draws against Hull and Fulham. This suggests the fans at home certainly do play a part in our fortunes to an extent that they cannot away from home.
However inspiring the support is to home players though, it must be equally intimidating to those from visiting teams. A trip to Stoke is never seen as an attractive one for away sides, with the result that teams are rarely up for the game when they visit Stoke, possibly in trepidation regarding our physical style, and as a result play less well. Take for example Arsenal, on paper and often, though not so much recently, in practice, one of the best teams in Europe. They looked very flat when they came to Stoke, and slumped to a 2-1 defeat. I feel fear factor of away teams has definitely contributed to our successes at home, and is a benefit we obviously cannot enjoy on the road.
The Britannia Stadium is an intimidating place for teams to come
This fear factor works both ways though, and there have been several occasions on which we have dropped vital points away from home through making late mistakes due to nerves. Our game against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge demonstrates this. With three minutes left we were 1-0 up and ended up losing 2-1. We lacked the belief that we could go on and beat Chelsea, meaning we got nervous, sat too deep and conceded costly late goals. In this case, sitting too deep on a lead cost us, as it often seems to do away from home. In general, I feel that we are far too defensive on the road, and would be more successful if we attacked teams more, as Hull were doing to great avail in the early part of the season, rather than setting up negatively in an attempt to gain a draw or maybe sneak a goal then try to hold on for all three points.
It is fair to say that we have also shot ourselves in the foot a few times this season on the road. Arguably the best we have played away from home this season was the first half at West Ham, though our second half fightback at Newcastle was excellent. At Upton Park we were 1-0 up at half-time, and though we conceded an equaliser shortly into the second half, we were on line for a valuable point and looking good for it. Step up Ricardo Fuller and Andy Griffin, a stupid on pitch dispute results in Fuller slapping Griffin. Fuller is sent off. West Ham have renewed hope. Stoke get nervy. West Ham score a late goal. Point out the window. There was a similar story at Sunderland, where we seemed to be heading for a comfortable goalless draw before Matthew Etherington got himself stupidly sent off for a petulant foul. A man down we go on to lose 2-0. Same old story.
Finally, could our yellow away kit, generally considered by fans to be about as aesthetically pleasing as Wayne Rooney, have played a part in our struggles away from home? Psychologists have suggested that yellow, particularly when mixed with red, as our kit has been at times this season, is a colour that is not conducive to calm thought. Does this explain our nerves on the road?
Could our ghastly away kit have contributed to our downfall?
One thing is for certain, our away form has been nowhere near good enough. Thankfully our home form has been superb, partially making up for it. There’s a chance we may be able to survive on home form alone, but a couple of results from our remaining four away games would be a very useful and welcome bonus. There’s no time like the present for addressing a problem, and our next away game, a trip to rock bottom and seemingly doomed West Brom in two weeks time, a year to the day since James Beattie’s last hat-trick, if it’s not tempting fate, is the perfect chance to get our first ever Premier League away win at a crucial, crucial time.
Very interesting stuff VJ,
Will be a huge game against WBA – a real ’six-pointer’ if ever there was one.
Don’t think the kit plays a part, although I love the Wayne Rooney comment!!!
Thank you,
Personally, I think our games against Middlesbrough, Blackburn and Newcastle go far further towards qualifying for six pointer status than the West Brom one because I feel that pretty much whatever they do (within reason), they’ll still go down. In the other three fixtures I have mentioned however, both sides will be really scrapping to pull away from the relegation zone making them more important.
I think the much smaller pitch at the Britannia plays a huge roll in our home success. It’s fair to say that we usually spend the larger marjority of games chasing the ball down and closing down the spaces. With the smaller pitch this is much easier to do and there are less places for the other team to go. They can’t go wide on us because the home pitch is so narrow.
Another advantage is Delaps throws get much closer to goal at high speed, I’d actually like to know how many throws we’ve scored at home to away.
Our left and right backs Wilkinson & Higginbotham don’t get caught out on the smaller pitch as much as they would on a wider pitch too. I think Wilkinson has come on a lot recently, but I still see him as someone who is very rash and dives into too many tackles where he should really be standing his ground and walking the player down the wing to out of play, our centre backs are more than capable of heading any crosses out. I’ve also seen him leave the player he’s marking to chase another play who has another Stoke player already on him. While I admire his dedication to win the ball, I can’t help but think he can be a liability when he does this especially on the wider pitch where there is more ground for the attacking wingers to run at.
Higginbotham I really rate as a defender. He was immense against Arsenal with Delap supporting him, but I wish he had a better first touch and din’t lump it forward as often as he does – I know this can help us, but it also loses us a lot of possesion.
I was at the Villa game recently, our defence just kept smashing the ball forward and it was coming straight back. Sonko was the worst for this, just hitting it forward and not getting the ball anywhere near Beattie. We came back into that game when we started running at them, i’d like to see more of this!
I think you make a very good point about the support. The level of vocal support given by Stoke fans really is spectacular. As a nominal Manchester United fan, I know that it far surpasses anything seen at Old Trafford. Take, for example, our recent humiliating home defeat to Liverpool, you could hear a pin drop.
David, you make a very good point about the pitch size, it’s something I didn’t consider but I can see that it would make a difference, particularly with the Delap throws. I’ve looked into how many throw-ins we’ve scored from home and away and it turns out to be seven at home (Villa, Everton (twice), Sunderland, Arsenal (twice) and Bolton) and just one away (Portsmouth). This illusrates the point very nicely.
I’m extremely happy with the way Wilkinson has come on this season. He still does make the occasional rash challenge, but he is still young and in his first proper year as a first-team player, so hopefully with time he’ll improve further still. Though his distribution isn’t great, I believe he has almost all the attributes necessary to be a very good full-back. I prefer to see Higginbotham at centre-back than left-back, then his deficiencies with the ball at his feet are not so apparent. You couldn’t really replace either Abdoulaye or Shawcross in those positions at the moment though.