For his Stoke City team to be tenacious at set pieces, Alex Neil is willing to put in the hard effort in the gym.
Stoke drew a match against Huddersfield in the middle of the week that they believe they should have won because they gave up two goals from dead balls, either in the first or second phase. In the early stages of the season, Neil has experienced a similar level of annoyance from what he believes to be other needless goals. He now argues that wanting to play exciting front-foot football does not imply letting things drift at the other end as he gets ready to play Hull tomorrow (12pm).
“I pride my teams on being hard, disciplined, hard to break down, hard to beat, and physically should be able to compete with anybody,” he stated. But if we’re being completely honest, we haven’t, and in the end, that has cost us some of our objectives. We therefore want to work on improving that aspect.
“For any of my teams, being the kind of team that can physically handle set plays has never really been a problem. This is one of those instances when you occasionally give up goals in particular ways and you have to reach a point where you have to be able to correct it and still fight.
On Wednesday, Huddersfield took the lead after Stoke was beaten to a header from a free-kick and then left a man unguarded in the heart of the six-yard box after only partially clearing a corner, allowing the hosts to score an equalizer.
Neil stated, “It’s something we need to work on. “Since we’re not the type of team to play from back to front, we don’t practice it as much as other clubs do. We’ll hold sessions where we advance the ball and practice set plays because we’re competing with ourselves in practice. Our team is the kind that likes to play the ball on the ground, throw balls down the sides, try to build combinations, overload areas, and take
While teams like Rotherham and Huddersfield might achieve this by simply moving the ball forward a lot and then scoring on second balls. That’s acceptable since it works for them.
“I believe that we occasionally use set plays, but perhaps not as frequently as other teams would, but it’s something we need to pay more attention to.
“I also believe that when you look at us, particularly the other night when Wesley wasn’t in the lineup, we’re not the largest. Big guys in the Championship are 6’5″ or 6’6″, not 6’1″ or 6’2”. We’re not particularly big.
Stoke, who added Michael Rose and Luke McNally in the summer, had also been interested in acquiring a large center-back but were unable to close a deal.
