Marked for Mathieu Perrin
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad29 Oct 2035
A knee injury of the worst kind for Mathieu Perrin
15 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Stoke City lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Match27 Oct 2035
5 matches without a win for Stoke City
The run now stands at 5, and the questions being asked around Stoke City are no longer polite ones.
Squad29 Oct 2035
23 days, the scan says, and scans are kinder than reality. The fixtures in that window have just become somebody else’s job.
Squad29 Oct 2035
Million Manhoef falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Squad29 Oct 2035
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Stoke City this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Player ratings29 Oct 2035
Successful dribbles: 14. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad22 Oct 2035
A knee injury of the worst kind for Mathieu Perrin
22 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Stoke City lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad22 Oct 2035
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Stoke City may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Market22 Oct 2035
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Stoke City is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Match20 Oct 2035
The wait goes on for Stoke City
4 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
Player ratings22 Oct 2035
Successful dribbles: 23. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad22 Oct 2035
Words at Stoke City training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Million Manhoef is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad15 Oct 2035
A knee injury of the worst kind for Mathieu Perrin
29 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Stoke City lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Player ratings15 Oct 2035
Successful dribbles: 28. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Player ratings15 Oct 2035
Richarlison, 38, rolls back the years — 7.86
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 7.86 at 38, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Squad15 Oct 2035
Million Manhoef falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Squad15 Oct 2035
A move Brandon Powell would have made for nothing
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Brandon Powell is living that version at Stoke City, and it tends to show in the first month.
Squad15 Oct 2035
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Stoke City this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Loan watch15 Oct 2035
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at Stoke City, and 0 appearances in 9 say he has earned the hearing.
Match13 Oct 2035
A 1‑1 draw with Ipswich Town leaves the dressing room somewhere between relief and regret.
Market15 Oct 2035
Tomáš Rigo linked with a move away
The name of Tomáš Rigo keeps appearing in other people's back pages. Stoke City say nothing, which says plenty.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad8 Oct 2035
A knee injury of the worst kind for Mathieu Perrin
36 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Stoke City lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Player ratings8 Oct 2035
Successful dribbles: 33. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad8 Oct 2035
33 appearances across 11 seasons in these colours. Careers like that are not built any more, and Stoke City know what they have.
Boardroom8 Oct 2035
An order from above at Stoke City: somebody has to go
Balance sheets do not care about form or about who the manager was planning to build around. The board have decided a sale is required, and the only question left is which name ends up carrying it.
Squad8 Oct 2035
Words at Stoke City training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Million Manhoef is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Boardroom8 Oct 2035
The numbers do not look good at Stoke City
Wages have outrun income and the accountants have started attending meetings they used to send apologies to. Ambition comes second in a season like this.
Squad8 Oct 2035
Róbert Boženík was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Boardroom8 Oct 2035
Wages eat 123% of everything Stoke City earn
There is a figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.
Market8 Oct 2035
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Million Manhoef signs something — a contract at Stoke City or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad1 Oct 2035
A knee injury of the worst kind for Mathieu Perrin
43 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Stoke City lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad1 Oct 2035
33 appearances across 11 seasons in one shirt. Nobody builds a career like that on purpose any more; it happens to a certain kind of footballer at a certain kind of club.
Squad1 Oct 2035
51 days, the medical staff say, and medical staff are optimists by profession. The team sheet will look wrong without him.
Market1 Oct 2035
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Stoke City, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad1 Oct 2035
Million Manhoef falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Match29 Sep 2035
Beaten 0‑1, and beaten fairly. The manager kept his words short afterwards, which was probably wise.
Market1 Oct 2035
The Richarlison talk will not go away
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Stoke City know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Player ratings1 Oct 2035
Successful dribbles: 13. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Market1 Oct 2035
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Stoke City, another week without a signature from Biel Díaz.