2 days Ago By [email protected] (Peter Smith)
Stoke City are conducting final interviews for a new academy manager this week. A new person is being brought in to work under Gareth Owen, who has been academy director since 2019 and became academy technical director last month, a role which will see him working closely with Jon Walters and take on duties for first team and women’s team matters as well. Walters explained: “Gareth has helped me immensely in a lot of areas so we want to develop that further and put in a new academy manager under Gareth and give Gareth more remit (across different departments).
“If you look at the academy players this year, there have been a lot of debuts and there are more players coming through. And it’s not just a place to develop players, it’s how we can innovate to help staff become the best they can become. There are a lot of really innovative projects going on behind the scenes and over the last year there have been a number of positions that staff have gone into and developed their careers.
“Ryan Shawcross is now working with the first team, the analysts have come through the academy and worked really hard to be where they are, people moving around the academy as they move through badges and we’re seeking help from top performing people to get expert insight into how we develop people. “Of course, ultimately it’s about what we do on the pitch but all that will hopefully help it.” Owen has always made a point about the importance of making sure that players emerge from the Stoke academy as well-rounded characters who understand what it means to represent Stoke City.
He added: “A big thing here is staff development. Ultimately you’re a product of your environment so if you want players demonstrating certain characteristics and the values of Stoke City, we want staff doing the same. There are projects here, insights that take place like guest speakers coming in and proper formal development for staff as much as players because ultimately this club is built on opportunities.
We need to make sure we’re maximising those opportunities.” Viktor Johansson has been talking to the local media this morning and we asked him about his extra duties as match day captain, including what he said in the pre-match huddle before that big win over Queens Park Rangers on Saturday. Johansson said: “Normally we share the responsibility.
On Saturday, I told Burger to give the team talk and he’s got some brilliant team talks. It’s just final words. Everyone is lively in the changing room so it’s not like someone needs to come in and speak over someone, everyone takes responsibility and says what they need to say – and everyone needs different things.
” But what Burger said in the huddle, stays in the huddle. Johansson said: “We keep that in the huddle! I can’t go into that but Wouter has been brilliant, he’s a proper leader.” An interesting listen to Les Reed, Ian Torrance’s old boss at Southampton, talking to Radio Stoke about how Torrance worked under him and what he will bring to Stoke City as new head of recruitment.
It was a pretty gushing insight and one of the unique things he mentioned was Torrance’s importance in setting up the Black Box Room at Staplewood training headquarters. It was a bespoke and pretty pioneering way of collating and organising data and analysis, inspired by Matthew Syed’s book Black Box Thinking. Reed explained how it helped Southampton prepare for when they lost key players like Adam Lallana and Rickie Lambert, staying ahead of rivals to land targets who would improve the team rather than be weakened.
“They can constantly analyse the data from training and matches, just as aviation learns from the cockpit recorders,” wrote Syed in The Times when it was in full swing. “The analysts are striving to build better metrics to improve recruitment, despite the statistical challenges. They have studied a number of outside organisations, including Google.
” It sounds like the kind of innovative project that Walters mentioned above and the kind of succession planning that Mike Pejic suggested has been lacking over the last 10 years at Stoke in his latest column on Saturday. Shannon Stamps’ 40-yard goal wasn’t enough to help Stoke City Women to victory over Rugby Borough. Stamps scored a stunner to add to a strike from Evie Priestly and put Stoke 2-1 up around the hour mark but late goals from Yas Mosby, who had already scored the opener, and Lily Greenslade gave Borough a surprise 3-2 win.
It is only Stoke’s fifth loss of the season in the league. They return to action next Sunday away at West Bromwich Albion before ending the season with a home match against Halifax. We can only mention Million Manhoef here.
Last week, in the feature below, we picked out the right winger as a player we wanted to hang our hat on to put defenders on their backside and be a talisman, adding that he could always use his right foot to help too. Sure enough, he ticked off all three points against QPR in his best attacking performance for months. So well done Million and let’s hope we see more of the same over the next few weeks.
We’ll actually go for two players this week: full-backs Junior Tchamadeu and Eric Bocat. They both probably produced their best performances in a Stoke shirt on Saturday but the key, as Robins was keen to hammer down post match, is to repeat it. “We've got to guard against that complacency that we think we've cracked it when we've had a decent performance and a win,” said Robins.
“We've got seven games and we have to keep the performances really high and keep picking points up." First team: v Preston North End (away, Saturday, 3pm) Under-21s: v Derby County (away, Tuesday, 1pm) Women’s team: v West Bromwich Albion (away, Sunday, 3pm) March 31, 1993 – 2-0 win at Port Vale: Stoke go 10 points clear at the top of Division Two thanks to goals from Mark Stein and Nigel Gleghorn at Vale Park; Bruce Grobbelaar (final league appearance) March 31, 1964 – 3-0 win over West Ham United: Eddie Stuart (final league appearance) March 31 – birthday: Carl Dickinson (38) April 1, 1991 – 1-0 defeat to Preston North End: Vince Hilaire (final league appearance) April 1, 2000 - 3-3 draw with Bristol Rovers: Peter Thorne scored hat-trick while Gavin Ward was attacked by pitch invader April 2 – birthdays: Scott Barrett (62), Ibrahim Afellay (39) April 3, 1953 – 1-0 loss to Tottenham Hotspur: Dennis Herod (final league appearance) April 3 – birthdays: Steve Simonsen (46), Sambegou Bangoura (43) April 4 – birthday: Peter Hoekstra (52) April 5, 1992 - 3-3 draw with Peterborough United: Wayne Biggins stars in Autoglass Trophy Northern Area final first leg but is banned for return match April 5, 2003 – 0-0 draw with Gillingham: Paul Warhurst, Ade Akinbiyi (first league appearances), Mark Wilson (final league appearance) While you're here, we have launched a new WhatsApp group to deliver the latest Stoke news directly to your phone. Click on this link, select 'Join Chat' and you're in.
If for some reason you decide you no longer want to be in our community, you can leave at any time by clicking on the name at the top of your screen and clicking 'Exit Group', simple as that..
