Comment by Martin Smith

AFTER the last few Stoke performances the display at Blackburn came as something of a breath of fresh air, reaffirming once again that we have a team of considerable talent and many qualities, capable of playing some pretty good football when they put their minds to it.

At Ewood Park our players were sharp and incisive, knocked the ball about well at times and really created more than enough chances to have won the game. It’s true that the home side also had some chances to sneak the win, particularly in the second half, but overall Stoke edged it and looked at their most dangerous playing some good stuff along the ground.

The only thing that really held us back was our finishing, as we once again showed why we are amongst the lowest scorers in the Premier League at the moment. We created no fewer than SIX golden chances to win the game – Whitehead (twice), Lawrence, Sidibe, Wilkinson and Beattie – but failed to take any of them.

The lack of a true cutting edge has cost us several times this season already and it was a shame to see such a good performance not get the three points it deserved.

The positives far outweigh the negatives from Ewood Park though and the width of Stoke’s play, with both Etherington and Lawrence showing a real willingness and ability to menace from out wide and to cut into the middle of the field on occasion. I don’t think Blackburn were expecting to see that kind of football from Stoke and they weren’t entirely sure what to do about it at times.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; Tony Pulis has assembled an extremely good squad of players at Stoke City and when we use it to the very best of its ability we look more than capable of matching last season’s fantastic first season in the Premier League.

I’m even tempted to say we could improve on it, but I’m not greedy and I worry that our lack of goals won’t always be compensated for by our heroic defence (only Chelsea and Manchester Utd have conceded fewer away goals than us this season!)

On the subject of our lack of goals, it has been interesting to see the, ahem, ‘heated’ debate amongst Stoke fans concerning the impact and influence of Mamady Sidibe, who started his first game of the season at the weekend.

There are those who feel he is an integral part of the Stoke City mechanism, vital to the style of football we play and who are willing to shower him with praise for his contribution. Then there are those who feel his importance is overplayed and that his inclusion does not represent the club “pushing on” as we’d hoped it would.

I’ll have to confess that I find myself more in the camp of the latter than the former on that one. I really do appreciate the unstinting qualities of effort of commitment that Big Mama brings to the table but I find myself feeling somewhat uneasy about his return to the starting XI.

If this were a one-off, forced upon us by injuries and suspensions, then there’d be nothing to worry about. Mamady is as honest as the day is long and his harrying style of play, allied to his natural strength is always likely to give opposing defences a bit to worry about.

Unfortunately, I feel his inclusion back starting is more down to design than accident. Beattie may be slightly injured at the moment but Tuncay sat most of the match out on the bench again and Kitson was allowed to go out on loan in the knowledge that Big Mama was being groomed for a return to the side.

On a day when all of our best chances were created along the ground and when James Beattie won more headers in the brief time he was on the field than Mamady won during his extended stint, it’s hard to see why some are making the case that we are a better team with him? Our sterling end of term run last season, as we shot up from the relegation places to a final position of 12th came without Mama in the team and we started this season well enough without him.

What really concerns me is whether his return to the side represents a potential step backward, rather than a look into the future? We have spent some £40M in the past two years or so, including £13.5M on strikers alone since we won promotion, but we are now going back to a player with a career goals-per-game ratio of about one in seven.

At a time when Ricardo Fuller has league goal to his name, and Beattie just two, it’s hard to make a case for Mamady to be brought back in. we saw on Saturday, when he insanely passed the ball back to Lawrence after being played in with a clear sight of goal, following a superb move by Stoke. Mama just has no goalscoring instinct in him and there has to be a question about his overall worth to the line-up.

To be fair to him, Mama is not himself back to full fitness just yet and when he does play you can always be sure of getting a full shift out of him. Perhaps TP will prove the doubters wrong and Mama will either go on a goalscoring glut, or else help trigger one for his team-mates? If he continues to start then I doubt that will be the case but I hope to be proven wrong.

Mama is at least getting a game and that’s more than can be said for the man with the unhappiest face at Stoke right now, Tuncay. Whatever excitement greeted the arrival of this Turkish forward back in August has all but evaporated now and there are many Stoke fans who feel his departure is a more likely outcome than ever forging a starting place for himself in the Stoke line-up.

Tuncay’s role at the club right now is as a late substitute for Ricardo Fuller and the same thing happens each time he comes on. He knows he only has a few minutes to make an impact and he ends up trying too hard, with the end result that he loses the ball or messes up. It’s quite sad to watch actually.

There are more than a few Stoke fans who’d like to see Fuller and Tuncay together but that doesn’t appear to be on the manager’s radar at the moment. He obviously feels that the two wouldn’t make for a decent strike partnership and he’s certainly better placed than I am to make that call.

However, it is a shame that we have o0nly seen the Fuller-Tuncay partnership on three occasions this season, because it has a showed a little promise. They had 24 minutes together in the home game against Chelsea and it’s only right to say that they didn’t really click in that game - though not many forward lines to click against Chelsea.

Since then though they have had 19 minutes together at Spurs, where we went on to win the game late on, and about 25 minutes together in the League Cup game against Blackpool when we actually scored FOUR times in the final fifteen minutes. I know, it was only Blackpool, but four goals is still pretty good in such a short space of time.

After bringing us this far I trust the manager to get it right and am patient enough to see what other plans he has. Ultimately though I’d like to see if a Fuller-Tuncay partnership ever had a hope of working. They’re both extremely talented players on the ball and with Lawrence and Etherington on the flanks you’d hope something might click there.

We did try Pericard and Cresswell in various combinations, so I don’t think it’s wishing for too much to hope to see two naturally gifted players like our Turkish and Jamaican forwards get a run together, if only to prove that they can’t actually be together in the forward line!

Here’s to Arsenal away next week and a fervent hope that we don’t catch them on the rebound from their thumping by Chelsea. This will be a real test for Stoke.