1) If you can meet with triumph and disaster, and treat those two impostors just the same…”disaster” is maybe something of an exaggeration in describing yesterday’s result, but the point is that we shouldn’t overreact to the disappointment of two dropped points at home in a winnable game, just as we shouldn’t get carried away with a brilliant win at White Hart Lane last week. It’s football. It happens.

2) That said, the second half display was probably the worst home performance from Stoke since their promotion to the Premier League. Everybody has a bad day at the office now and again, so hopefully we can just put this down as a blip and move on. What was worrying was the distinctly un-Pulis like complacency we showed. Having coasted the first half we assumed it was job done and switched off. The final 45 minutes saw Stoke second to every ball and lackadaisical in their approach. There was no sense of urgency, our passing was atrocious and Sorensen and Delap actually seemed to be wasting time with the score at 2-2. The one thing you can say with any certainty about the teams Tony Pulis puts out, and the thing that has made me proud to be a Stoke fan during his tenure, is that you can expect total, 100% commitment from the first whistle to the last. The complacency shown in what is the nearest thing to a local derby we have these days needs to be nipped in the bud pronto, and hopefully Pulis will waste no time in kicking some backsides and stamping it out.

3) Wolves have nothing to worry about, they’ll be fine. Mick McCarthy is a good manager and seems a thoroughly decent human being to boot. His decision to replace Castillo with Milijas changed the game. Wolves reminded me of Stoke last season - they lack quality in a few key areas but make up for it with their physical style and complete commitment - ironically something that Stoke themselves were lacking yesterday. They looked slow and defensively naïve in the first half, but then rolled up their sleeves and, spurred by a terrific away following, set about salvaging the game, while easily dealing with our feeble offence. Ultimately, Wolves can probably feel entitled to be disappointed with just one point for their efforts, so total was their second half superiority. Full credit to them.

4) From a Stoke perspective, this was purely the Matthew Etherington show. Etherington was head and shoulders above anyone else in red and white stripes. After a poor start to the season, he’s shown steady improvement and on Saturday he turned in the performance he’s been threatening for a while. Every time Stoke looked dangerous, Etherington was pulling the strings. The erstwhile West Ham winger demonstrated a turn of pace which hasn’t always been evident during his stint at Stoke, and during the second half, when his team mates were throwing in the towel, he was the one player who remained a danger to Wolves, digging the ball out, beating his man and looking to create something. His strong run and excellent ball across the box created the first goal and his sublime volley was as good a finish as we’ve seen at the Britannia Stadium. Etherington has fully justified TP’s faith in him and finally seems to be making that left wing berth his own.

5) I’ve always been a huge fan of Mama Sidibe. I’ve defended him over the years when footballing thickos slated his lack of goals and were too blind to see how important he was to the style of play that got us promoted. Football however, is a ruthless business, and the truth is that Mama, as vital as he has been to our system in the past, is a limited footballer and we’ve moved on from having to rely on him. This season, we’ve shown a willingness to mix up our style of play, to try and keep the ball on the deck more and improve our ball retention. The presence of Mama in the team is an obstacle to this evolution. As we saw during his second half cameo yesterday, the second that Sidibe enters the fray, we immediately resolve to repeatedly lump it up to him. That’s why the transparent haste in which Mama has been rushed back is worrying. Do we really plan to revert to the reliance on route one and Mama’s flick-ons? Does Pulis see Mama as a regular starter again? He clearly isn’t currently fit, and against a well-prepared Wolves he didn’t even win much in the air, which is usually his great strength. What must Dave Kitson think, having knuckled down, found some form and made himself one of the club’s top performers this season, to find himself first harshly dropped and then not even on the bench yesterday. It’s a cause for concern and it will be grimly fascinating to see how the situation plays out.

6) Abdoulaye Faye had an absolute shocker. Even during the first half, he was a t sixes and sevens, frequently out of position. During the second half it became even more noticeable, and Danny Collins was continually forced to move into the centre to cover for his errant captain. Faye hasn’t shone so far this season to anything like the extent he did last year in cleaning up at the player of the year awards. Whether it’s a lack of fitness, or complacency, he just doesn’t seem as sharp. Stoke’s defending was generally poor on Saturday as the amateurish marking, regardless of offside controversies, for Wolves’ goals showed. Given the importance TP attaches to set pieces, there’s just no excuse for giving away two such goals so cheaply.

7) Speaking of Collins, the myth that he is a better passer of the ball than Danny Higginbotham persists in spite of there being very little evidence to support it. Collins passed the ball intelligently at Spurs but against Wolves he was back to his careless worst, needlessly ceding possession with sloppy, thoughtless balls in dangerous areas.

8) After distinguishing himself last week with a brave display at WHL, Dean Whitehead reverted to type with another performance of staggering anonymity. You could be forgiven for not realising he was on the pitch, so minimal was his contribution. Whitehead simply doesn’t impose himself on the game in any way, shape or form. He can’t pass, rarely tackles…yes, he runs around a lot but to what effect? I was never a fan of Karl Henry during his Stoke career and his little whinge in the week about not being played was unjustified given his distinct mediocrity at the time. However, his industrious, lively showing for Wolves at the Brit was in a different league to three-quarters of Stoke’s midfield yesterday.

9) Rory Delap worked very hard, as he always does, and we finally squeezed a bit more mileage out of the throw with Etherington’s goal, but he is a fish out of water on the right flank. He simply has none of the attributes that make for a productive right sided midfielder. Why Liam Lawrence - the best crosser of a ball at the club and one of the hardest workers - has been dropped is a mystery. What, in TP’s mind, gives Delap the edge over Lawrence?

10) Tuncay, as one or two have noted, is the new Patrik Berger. A player of world class skill and invention who Tony Pulis has simply no idea how to utilise. The introductions of Mama and Tuncay actually weakened Stoke yesterday, because we were effectively left without a striker. Ricardo Fuller had been well shackled all afternoon, but as long as he’s on the pitch, Stoke are in with a chance. Tuncay’s eagerness to get hold of the ball left Stoke with nobody to capitalise in the danger zone. Both he and Sidibe were trying to play in “the hole” with the result that we didn’t remotely threaten the Wolves defence.

So where to play Tuncay? Two solutions present themselves - either up front, with the taller, stronger Fuller just behind - or as part of a five man midfield with two workhorses - say, Diao and Delap - doing the dirty work and allowing the Turk to push forward. Either strategy is probably too radical, however, for a manager reluctant to deviate from the tried and tested formula which has served us so well up to now. This raises the question of why Sanli was signed in the first place. Every game in which Tuncay’s enormous talent is misused, or not used at all, makes the decision to spend a not insignificant £6m on him all the more bewildering

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