Stoke City 0 Blues 0 .. Match Report

Stoke were poor, Blues were shocking, and it was generally just one of those games that should be erased from all historical records, as to think it was meant to be a display of 'the beautiful game' is quite frankly embarrassing. Oh, Mikael Forssell missed a penalty too - I nearly forgot that.

Steve Bruce opted for the same team (and substitutes) as those who had picked up a 1-0 victory away at Sunderland 3 days previously. This meant David Dunn and Neil Danns remained on the bench as Blues played a more defensive midfield, and DJ Campbell still wasn't considered to be fit enough to return.

To describe Blues' performance as dreadful would be an insult on some fine purveyors of dreadfulness down the years - the cast of 'Eldorado', mid-90's boy band North And South and Sunderland Football Club. This was beyond dreadful. A dreadful performance would have been a step up on what Blues churned out at Stoke.

Now, there's very little to actually report on the game, but effectively Blues barely had a chance, Stoke had a few, and Forssell missed a second half penalty after Fabrice Muamba was fouled in the area. Forssell put the penalty in exactly the same spot as his match-winning penalty at Sunderland and Steve Simonsen - being paid to keep the ball out of the back of the net and all - may well have watched that penalty once or twice, so guessed the right way. And that was about it.

Blues' attacking play was about as menacing as a DVD of Dale Winton reading nursery rhymes. There was absolutely nothing to it. Forssell was very, very poor. Nicklas Bendtner couldn't really impose himself on the game, and the midfield of Seb Larsson, Muamba, Mehdi Nafti and Damien Johnson created so, so little that it was a crime that Dunn and Danns were sat on the bench having to watch.

One key problem to Blues' lack of potency was that their play lacked width. (There was also the fact that most players played like absolute buffoons and that they were unable to pass to each other.) I think there's a bit of misconception about how you MUST have wingers to play with width. You don't. If you can get the players playing to a system that employs some wide play, they don't have to be wingers in the Pennant or Lazaridis mould (though Julian Gray may help... has he suffered the same fate as Jamie Clapham?) In their previous two games, without actually employing an out-and-out winger, Blues have still been able to inject width into their play. Stephen Kelly showed this in setting up the winner against Colchester, and Larsson did so early on at Sunderland, whilst Johnson did so towards the end.

It just didn't happen at Stoke, and Blues were completely stifled because of it. To make matters worse though, when Bruce decided it was time to throw Dunn into the fray, he took off Larsson, played Dunn in behind the front two, and employed a tight midfield three of Muamba, Nafti and Johnson. What difference does it make?! It's even narrower then! Getting Dunn into the game was important, but Blues were stifled even more and restricted to having to attack through central channels which meant Stoke's defence could narrow and look fairly comfortable. The only time Blues were able to play with any width was very late on, when Danns came on and played down the left - proof that you don't need a winger to play with width as long as you can get someone into wide positions and utilise them properly, as Danns is as much of a left winger as Stoke City are 'a big club'.

So, without any width, and with very little pace, Blues were always going to struggle to break Stoke down. The problem though is that a point away at Stoke in a 'big local derby' (that attracted more police and empty seats than fans) may look to some people (Steve Bruce) as a good result. It wasn't though. Stoke were so utterly beatable it's untrue. Quite simply, Blues should beat the likes of Stoke (on this performance), be it at home, away, wherever. Bruce had waxed lyrical about Stoke's front two of Vincent Pericard and Mamady Sidibe prior to the game, and yes, they're a couple of muscular lads who put themselves about, but come on... I'd rather have those two up front against us than the diminutive duo of Robbie Keane and Jermain Defoe, for example. Let's not go overboard and compensate for woeful Blues performances by making out that the opposition are actually quite good. Not one Stoke player on the pitch on Saturday would get into Blues' team on paper. But here we are, it's the 'on paper' argument again, as it was last season. So, if we're so strong 'on paper' and so woeful 'on football pitch', whose fault is it?

One thing that stands out though is that this performance wasn't much worse (if at all) than the performance at Sunderland. In both games Blues were awarded penalties - at Sunderland Forssell scored, at Stoke he missed. That's the only real difference between the two games, so this wasn't really a shocking performance completely out of the blue or anything. It was - but for Steve Simonsen having bothered to watch a Forssell penalty of 3 days earlier - the same as at Sunderland. Let's face it, the Colchester game was hardly impressive too, though there were one or two positives from that.

Teams have bad days - we all know that and you can accept that. This was a very bad day. I'd go so far as to say Maik Taylor (and I'm not his biggest fan, as you may know) and Bruno N'Gotty stood out for Blues in this game, because they were average and everyone else was so bad. (I don't include Dunn and Danns in this, as it's not fair given their fleeting performances.) Damien Johnson also needs a special mention for possibly his poorest ever performance in a Blues shirt, but then there were lots of others who were very bad too. The defence looked very shaky again, with Kelly and Matt Sadler really struggling, along with token struggler Olivier Tebily.