WHAT I would have given to have been a fly on the wall of the Stoke City dressing room at the KC Stadium at about 3.30pm yesterday

Who would have been the most annoyed – TP, Tuncay or Abdy Faye?

That’s a pretty fearsome trio of peeved Potters to be facing each other down ... but how will the chips fall in the aftermath of City’s late capitulation at Hull?

Faye’s form has brought some comment in recent weeks, with some hardy souls even suggesting he should be moved into midfield or even – heaven forbid – be dropped.

True, the Lord has shown mere human frailties this season, and in truth for any player to have maintained the level of performance he produced in the second half of last season would be superhuman. But to leave him out?

Well now the manager has no option but to pair Ryan Shawcross with a new partner when Stoke face a crucial home game against Portsmouth – again live on Sunday afternoon TV – in a fortnight’s time.

For me he has no option but to move one of the centre-backs currently playing at full-back inside, and bring into the team one of last season’s full-backs – either Andy Wilkinson or Danny Higginbotham.

Which way that will fall only the manager will know, although you can bet the message boards will be abuzz with speculation.

Personally, I’d go for Huth in the centre and Wilkinson in at right-back, although I have a lot of sympathy for Higginbotham and his absence from the starting line-up at the moment as Danny Collins is prone to more errors than Higgy, although he offers more going forward.

Then who knows what went down when Tony met Tuncay in the bowels of the KC after the Turkish captain stormed down the tunnel to join the dismissed Faye after being sacrificed to make way for a replacement defender just seven minutes after joining the action.

Tuncay made his contempt for the manager’s decision clear by shaking his replacement Andy Wilkinson’s hand and then stalking past Pulis ... and we all know what happens to players who cross the boss.

Tuncay does seem to have had a raw deal since joining the club in that high profile, big-money deal in August. He’s yet to make a Premier League start and has been a peripheral figure who seems not to fit into Stoke’s pattern of play.

I don’t think we’ve heard the last of that little soap opera mini-series yet.

But Faye’s suspension and Tuncay’s toys lying strewn around his pram are the least of Tony Pulis’s problems right now. He has to figure out what is going wrong with his team such that they have lost 11 points from winning positions this season.

Those 11 points would currently have Stoke clear in second position.
Contrary to the doom-mongers’ predictions, City aren’t in free fall, but two successive below par second-half performances when seemingly in control of a game against a bottom three side does suggest there are issues to be resolved.

It’s up to TP, Peter Reid and Gerry Francis to use the international break to work out how best to remedy them.

For me there is an imbalance in midfield which is costing Stoke dear.
I want to see Liam Lawrence given a run of games on the right with Rory Delap brought inside to be the enforcer alongside Glen Whelan.

Dean Whitehead just does not bring enough to the party to justify his continued inclusion. It may be that Salif Diao comes back into contention for that role, although his continued battle for fitness does give cause for concern.

That and the lack of specialist full-backs, which is becoming the latest in the long line of things the manager won’t change because he doesn’t want to have to admit he’s wrong, are clearly huge issues.

It took Stoke until January to find their best balance last season and the search still goes on this campaign.

It’s not a case of second season syndrome yet, but maybe this break comes at a good time for the management team to take stock of the resources at their disposal and come up with a plan to solidify a team which is showing signs of fraying at the edges.