In the last couple of seasons I’ve taken to watching three podcasts where they predict the outcome of the latest round of Championship fixtures. There are five people involved in all and, for the first time I can remember there is unanimity regarding the result of City’s next match among them with the only differences being in the scoreline and, even then, you get a clear idea of what sort of game they’re expecting it to be.
Every game City play these days gets labelled things like “massive”, “must win” and “a mini Cup Final”, but their one with Stoke tomorrow is more deserving of such descriptions than most given a City win would see them overtake their opponents and move out of the bottom three.
Going into added time at City’s match at Preston and Stoke’s at home to Luton on Tuesday, we were losing 2-1 and Stoke were winning 1-0 and the gap between the two clubs stood at five points, but a goal for both away sides in. added time saw us gaining one point and Stoke losing two. Stoke could have come here knowing that while a defeat would be a blow to their survival hopes, they’d still have some sort of points cushion above us, but now a loss would probably see them drop into the bottom three for what I think might be the first time this season with games fast running out.
Mind you, none of those five pundits I mentioned earlier see Stoke losing, but none of them see us being beaten either, because three of them have the match finishing 1-1 and the other two 0-0.
So, are there reasons to believe that the five pundits have got things wrong and City can get a win which may see an erosion of the mood of resigned acceptance of an inevitable relegation which seems to have become more pronounced the longer our unbeaten run of four matches has gone on?
The two previous meetings between the teams this campaign support the notion of a draw, but, perhaps, not as low scoring a one as is being predicted. The reverse league fixture finished 2-2 and it was 3-3 when the teams met at Stoke in the Fourth Round of the FA Cup before City won the penalty shoot out.
The most upbeat stat I can come up with is that, since losing 2-0 at Stoke in 2020, City have gone ten games unbeaten against them, but only four of the ten have been won and one of those was the FA Cup tie mentioned earlier which went to penalties after the teams could not be separated over a hundred and twenty minutes.
Therefore, all things considered, you can see why the draw is so favoured, but the only prediction I’ll make is that if I end up doing a couple of these seven decades quizzes for City v Stoke games next season, it’s more likely to be because we’ve both gone down as opposed to stayed up.
On to the quiz then, seven Stoke related questions with the answers to be posted on here on Sunday.
60s. Which Stoke player from this decade holds a unique record when it comes to players capped by England – a couple of hints which may help you, he played three times for his country and he couldn’t have set his record in the sixties.
70s. Perhaps the most noteworthy things about this Stoke born defender’s pretty mundane career was that he would have only had to have driven for about an hour from his birthplace to reach the second team he played for and less than half an hour from Stoke to reach his third, and final, club. He played a little under fifty times for Stoke during his four years in the first team squad at a time when they were not quite the power they’d been in the late sixties and earlier in the seventies and a loan move to a team of rodent like creatures that aren’t rodents signalled that his time at the Victoria Ground was coming to an end. When he did move on permanently, it was to play for a team managed by a former Stoke boss and another of his managers at his third club was a scorer of a famous goal for Wales a few years earlier – can you name the player being described?
80s. Crab totters on top of tee, but emerges as Stoke first teamer towards the end of this decade. (5,7)
90s. Big blue train for a lawman?
00s. Sounds like a command for a sword maker to prostrate themselves?
10s. The appropriate standard by the sound of it.
20s. Misspelling of south coast artisan perhaps?
Answers to follow:
