Marked for Frank Fielding
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match3 Nov 2026
Ipswich Town go through and Stoke City go home, 1‑3 the scoreline that did it. The dressing room will call the league the priority now, because that is what dressing rooms say.
Match7 Nov 2026
7 matches without a win for Stoke City
The run now stands at 7, and the questions being asked around Stoke City are no longer polite ones.
Squad9 Nov 2026
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 7 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
Match7 Nov 2026
Beaten 1‑2, and beaten fairly. The manager kept his words short afterwards, which was probably wise.
Squad9 Nov 2026
Justin Devenny 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.
The dugout9 Nov 2026
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 1‑2 defeat, delivered by Matthew Johnson to a room that had heard them before.
The dugout9 Nov 2026
Sydie Peck is still being punished for one mistake
Nobody will confirm it and the team sheets confirm it every week. One error has bought him a spell as second choice that is already longer than the error deserved.
Player ratings9 Nov 2026
Successful dribbles: 14. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
The dugout9 Nov 2026
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad26 Oct 2026
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 6 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
Squad26 Oct 2026
George Hirst 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.
Squad26 Oct 2026
8 new faces, and Stoke City are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
The dugout26 Oct 2026
Clubs make promises constantly and the page usually only hears about them when they are broken. This one was honoured, and the dressing room noticed that faster than any supporter did.
Match24 Oct 2026
It finished 1‑1, and it somehow always looked like it would. One of those afternoons where the table moves less than the tempers.
Player ratings26 Oct 2026
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.
The dugout26 Oct 2026
Ben Killip asks for a word with the manager
“I would rather say it to his face than read about it.” The meeting was requested by the player, which tells you most of what you need to know.
The dugout26 Oct 2026
The view from the dugout
“We did not lose. Some weeks that is all you get, and I would rather have the point than not.” Matthew Johnson chose the glass-half-full version of 1‑1; the supporters left with the other one.
Market26 Oct 2026
Lewis Baker told to find a new club
“They were honest with me, and I would rather know.” Lewis Baker has been informed he is not in the manager's thinking at Stoke City.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad19 Oct 2026
There were 7 saves in it, and at least three that had no business being saves at all. The ten outfield players owe him a drink and they know it.
Market19 Oct 2026
Eric Bocat has one foot out of the door
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Stoke City they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Justin Devenny is a better footballer than he was
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 23 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Lamare Bogarde 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.
Squad19 Oct 2026
500 times in these colours, in all weathers and under four or five different managers. That kind of service is quietly disappearing from the game.
Match17 Oct 2026
0‑1 to Middlesbrough, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
The dugout19 Oct 2026
“I could talk about decisions and I could talk about luck. I will not. We lost.” The manager, 0‑1, and a press conference that lasted four minutes.
The dugout19 Oct 2026
Ben Killip asks for a word with the manager
“I would rather say it to his face than read about it.” The meeting was requested by the player, which tells you most of what you need to know.
Looking ahead19 Oct 2026
The leaders are next for Stoke City
Ipswich Town top the table and they are coming into view. Nothing to lose, which is what every manager says before losing.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad12 Oct 2026
At 22 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Sydie Peck in a row with a teammate
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.
Squad12 Oct 2026
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Sorba Thomas and Stoke City agree another 5 years.
Market12 Oct 2026
“They were honest with me, and I would rather know.” Million Manhoef has been informed he is not in the manager's thinking at Stoke City.
The dugout12 Oct 2026
The manager makes an example of Lewis Baker
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
The dugout12 Oct 2026
Frank Fielding is still being punished for one mistake
Nobody will confirm it and the team sheets confirm it every week. One error has bought him a spell as second choice that is already longer than the error deserved.
Looking ahead12 Oct 2026
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Lewis Baker’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Stoke City needing him to play as if none of it matters.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Ben Killip has seen what the next man earns
Numbers do not stay secret in a dressing room and never have. He is not asking for more than he is worth; he is asking why somebody beside him is worth more, and at Stoke City that is a harder question to answer.
The dugout12 Oct 2026
Million Manhoef asks for a word with the manager
“I would rather say it to his face than read about it.” The meeting was requested by the player, which tells you most of what you need to know.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Transfer targets14 Sep 2026
Tottenham wanted more than $15.4M and the board would not go there. Walked away, for now, which in a transfer window means until somebody blinks.
Market14 Sep 2026
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Market14 Sep 2026
The deal that would have taken Frank Fielding to Leicester City has collapsed at the last stage, and he reports back to Stoke City with a summer to forget and a season still to play. Nobody is saying which side walked away.
Squad14 Sep 2026
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.
Match12 Sep 2026
0‑2 to Birmingham, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Squad14 Sep 2026
20 days, the medical staff say, and medical staff are optimists by profession. The team sheet will look wrong without him.
Squad14 Sep 2026
“The easiest signature of my career.” Maksym Talovierov and Stoke City agree another 4 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
The dugout14 Sep 2026
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Matthew Johnson after 0‑2, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
Player ratings14 Sep 2026
The cruellest goal, and it is Justin Devenny's
A touch he did not want, a bounce he could not have read, and his name in the wrong column. There is no consoling a man after one of these, and Stoke City will not try tonight.