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Stoke City Fans Verdict: Royals Fall To Third Straight Defeat

Harry rounds up the reaction on twitter after Pauno’s men fell to their third straight defeat in a horrible performance.

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I usually hate international breaks, and deep down still do hate this one that’s coming up. However, I think it’ll give the players and Pauno a much-needed two weeks to rest, recover and regroup as Saturday’s result proved yet again that we’ve seemed to have lost our way a bit recently.

Some fans might think, in fact I know some definitely will, that I’m underestimating how poor we’ve been recently by saying ‘lost our way’, but I honestly think that’s all it is. We were poor, and we were poor against Preston North End too the game before, but we’ve set ourselves such ridiculously high standards so far this year that it can be easy to dip beneath them.

However, the defeat left the fans in a frustrated mood, which i can completely understand, but I also urge fans to look at the bigger picture and take perspective into account. There are still a lot of positives to take from our start to the season.

Here’s how the Loyal Royals reacted to the key talking points to come from the 3-0 loss to the Potters...

Defensive mistakes

Up until the Coventry game the Friday before last, we were the best defensive team in the division, conceding only one goal. Since then, however, it’s gone quickly downhill and we have now conceded nine goals in our last three games.

Our demise in defence has, funnily enough, coincided with the injury of Liam Moore, who has been a man mountain so far this year. The defensive mistakes continued again on Saturday, with Esteves, Rafael and Gibson all making individual errors directly leading to each of the three Stoke goals.

It left the fans angry and annoyed as, other than those mistakes, there really wasn't a lot in the game...

Attacking woes

Not only did we make silly mistakes leading to goals, when we did go behind we never really looked like creating anything of note - particularly in the second half.

Gibson had a chance on the stroke of half time which he really should’ve buried, but in the second half I can only recall us working Angus Gunn on one occasion, and even that was a speculative from substitute Aluko that went straight down his throat.

With Meite, Ovie and Swift all out injured, our creativity was always going to take a hit, however we need to find a way to get back into games when we go behind, and the fans agree with me on that...

Need for a break

I think this international break has come at exactly the right time. Hopefully it will give us the chance to get players back closer to full fitness and regroup before what is an extremely tough run of games.

It’ll be at the end of November, in my opinion, when I really think we'll see what this team are made of. We’ve shown signs of what we can do, we just need to find some solutions in this two-week period to some cracks that are starting to appear.

The fans certainly think we need a break, and are hoping we can get back to winning ways against Bournemouth in a couple of weeks...

Conclusion

A much-needed break is upon us, before some really, really tough games. Pauno will use these two weeks to reset and work on finding solutions to some really obvious problems that we’ve had over the last three games.

Let’s be honest, if you’d have been offered top of the league by mid November, you’d have taken it. Let’s keep things in perspective people.

URZ