Bear with me, I know this is a column about football and Stoke City, but I’ll start it out in the countryside over on the beautiful Staffordshire border. I had the honour this week of being a guest at Ilam for the annual Dovedale Sheep Dog trials. It’s a fantastic event – and it left me asking why isn’t sheepdog trials in the Olympic Games? When you look at the different sports that are in there, we marvel about a human brain and rider working with a horse in equestrian and dressage.
But what’s the difference between a shepherd and shepherdess working with sheep? This is total control with a whistle and shout, human and animals working together. The training they go through with the young dogs is phenomenal. I couldn’t help standing there thinking it’s like football but the opposition are eight sheep.
It’s trying to control them and make them do what you want them to do. It’s so delicate. If there’s one awkward sheep then it’s game over.
READ MORE: New boy and 'brilliant' teammate he is relieved to be lining up alongside READ MORE: Radical Stoke change has knock-on effects you probably hadn't considered It’s brilliant to watch, whether you’ve got a love for farming and the moors like me, or whether you just thrill at the great skill, incredible togetherness and the need for such discipline and accuracy. Get it at LA 2028 and it’d be a hit on television. It said on the programme for the event: “There is no good flock without a good shepherd and no good shepherd without a good dog.
” Well, you can’t just let players go out and do what they want either. You see Pep Guardiola at the top of the tree at the moment and his instructions are continuous from first minute to last, he’s worked them in the week for exactly how he wants. You can imagine that he’d love to have a Collie he could release to chase a right-back who has strayed out of position.
So it brings me to Stoke. At Watford last Saturday I saw wide open spaces and players running backwards. There was no togetherness, particularly in the spell at the start of the second-half, and it seemed there was a lack of understanding.
The last thing you want to be doing as a defender is to be running backwards – and they were doing it as a whole team, not just one man. It was frightening to watch. We’d been cut open.
Especially if you’ve gone one down you want to be in a position as a unit where you can come onto the ball, not be chasing after it facing your own goal. If you go behind, keep your shape and bottle and then you never know even if it goes into the last few minutes of the game. If anything, your front players are the ones who defend first, then midfield and then back line.
That should be number one policy. No matter if your eyes are on the transfer window and who else might come in, you need to deal with the players you’ve got in the building. Do your work in the week, come up with their threats and employ a tactic of stopping them.
‘When you lose possession, this is what they’re going to do so this is how we have to deal with it.’ Then you have a plan for when you regain possession – but you can’t do it with the barn door open. You have no support around the ball when you do get it back.
You’ve got to be together, both in defending and attacking. You’ve got your tactics for when you haven’t got it and each player has responsibility and it’s the same when you’re in possession. You should be ready to strike quickly.
You can bring whoever you want in before deadline day but unless you get the fundamentals right tactically about what you want from your team then you haven’t got much of a chance. To go back to Guardiola the shepherd, any player he sends out onto the pitch will be drilled within an inch of their lives. That should be true of any side.
I definitely want it true of my side. Lay down the law as a coach. No one can relax, everyone always knows exactly what they have to do.
Never be satisfied, nobody can let up. If they do, if one individual drops off for a second, let them know quickly. Nobody can shirk responsibility.
Even if the ball goes out of play, you’re still working. Never switch off. So we move on.
West Bromwich Albion have started quite well but we’ll have watched their first two games and know their strengths and weaknesses. Hopefully we have been working on that, the manager knows exactly what he wants to see and we’ll all see it from kick-off. We started the season with a 1-0 win against Coventry and that was important.
The home form needs to improve this season. But it doesn’t matter if it’s at home or away, you can’t have many afternoons like we did last weekend at Watford. Hopefully Steven Schumacher has been working on his whistles.
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