Mark Robins gets shove start at Stoke City as diehards tickle his sense of humour The main talking points from Stoke City’s win at Hull their first under Mark Robins’ management.
Stoke City secured their first league win under Mark Robins with a vital victory over league rivals Hull. Here are the talking points from the MKM Stadium.
A huge win for Stoke City, Mark Robins and the fans.
A first league win since the last game of 2023, a first away win since early November, a first league win under Mark Robins, scoring twice for the first time since mid-December and only the second time in three months.
They had to slog it out to get this one over the line and Robins is sure that they will start to look a lot better with a bit of confidence – and he appreciated the emotions in the away end, where 1,800 Stoke supporters sang from start to finish in hope, then despair, then in irony, then surprise, then pure joy.
“Well done to the players and I’m delighted for the supporters. I like the sense of humour and ‘We’ve had a shot!’ and things like that… but let’s really get behind them and let them feel that because they will reciprocate with their performances. I thought they were brilliant with their support.”
Viktor Johansson soaked up the love from fans at the end, as well as Ali Al-Hamadi. Unity is a lot easier, perhaps, when you’ve won but, if everyone has been convinced that Stoke have got the right manager, it maybe still needed a day like this to give everything a shove start.
Robins said: “That’s brilliant (the unity at the end). We need that. That’s fantastic to see. They’ve been brilliant and thankfully we’ve given them something, it’s long overdue but thankfully we’ve given them something to cheer about on the long journey home.”
Always willing to challenge for a header, which is a line that can’t be levelled at some Stoke players this season, busy and aggressive – and he got into positions where he could be dangerous. He had already gone pretty close with a back post header before he peeled away from his marker to score the equaliser.
He ran his socks off before his afternoon ended with cramp on the hour mark – and he has a week-and-a-half to dust himself down now because he’s cup-tied for next weekend’s fourth round clash with Cardiff.
Robins said: “He did (run his socks off) and that’s what he does. It’s brilliant that he got on the end of the shot and it was no fear, just hit through the ball and amazing, it just goes in the back of the net. That was, really, probably our only true effort on goal in the first half.
“There are chances that we turn down to go and create things still and that’s a frustration but he won’t turn it down and hopefully others will learn from it. If you buy a raffle ticket, a lottery ticket and win a prize it’s there for everyone to see.
“I thought we were ok in the game. I thought we passed the ball pretty well and defended pretty well when we needed to. They didn’t really cut us open too many times but there were times when we made decisions which game them too much space to run off the back.
“But whatever came in we got blocks and did whatever we needed to do to get it over the line today, which I’m absolutely delighted with.”
Missing men tell a story
No Ben Pearson, who sat this out after coming through two 45 minutes for the under-21s as he comes back after 10 months out; no Ben Wilmot nor Million Manhoef, Sam Gallagher, Eric Bocat, Jordan Thompson nor Sol Sidibe, while Lewis Baker was ill. Then Lynden Gooch joined them too while Bosun Lawal is juggling being cover on the first team bench and trying to get enough game time with the 21s to challenge for a spot.
