A more entertaining game than some recently and overall a draw was a fair result. Stoke were clearly uncertain at the back throughout but we just lack the quality in the final third to take full advantage. Haynes probably faced his most skilful opponent yet in Ince but stuck to his task and did well. We looked pretty solid in midfield and I would give Man of the Match to Laurent who put in a mighty shift for us both defending and attacking. Docherty's poor current form is a worry - he is definitely overplaying his set pieces and just needs to put in his stock cross to the far post more often. That said he produced our one real moment of quality in the second half and Holloway's glaring miss from his superb cross was the turning point of the game. Crouch coming on changed the game completely and Stoke could have nicked it at the end. Finally I must say that the Stoke 'support" was one of the most lamentable I have ever witnessed - no wonder their players are underperforming if they have to play in front of that amount of negativity every week. Clearly they expected to roll us over easily as they have so many ex-premier league players but football does not work like that and they would do well to show the opposition (and their own manager and team) a bit more respect.
i cant help but feel we threw away a very good chance of progressing, i saw the goal highlights Waterfall was at left back and got turned inside out, whilst haynes had a very good game he did not pick up crouches run till it was to late (you would hope a centre back or keeper would have alerted him to the threat)
Yep real shame about the result as I feel we could've won that game, instead we have a return match where they will be a little more prepared than last time.
