A convincing home win vs struggling Oxford United means a real opportunity beckons.
On Boxing Day 1st place Sheffield United welcome 3rd placed Burnley and 5th placed Blackburn welcome 4th placed Sunderland.
We on the other hand travel to struggling 19th placed Stoke City, so, can we do it on a cold Thursday in Stoke?
Confidence should be high, expensive loanee Manor Solomon had a Summerville like performance vs Oxford with 2 assists, 1 goal and 4 chances created. Brenden Aaronson helped himself to a goal and an assist and Dan James continued his impressive form with his 2nd goal in 3 games.
Stoke on the other hand laboured to a 2-0 defeat to in form but 10 men Sheffield Wednesday (all be it they were robbed of atleast 1 penalty).
Having sacked former Plymouth manager
Steven Schumacher in September Stoke surprised many by giving the job to 36 year old Norwich City first team coach Narcís Pèlach whose only previous managerial role was a 2 game caretaker spell in charge of Huddersfield.
His connections in football have allowed him to study Man City manager Pep Guardiola, our own Marcelo Bielsa through his relationship with Carlos Corberan and Neil Warnock
It didn't start well with 2 defeats but then results picked up somewhat, a run of only 1 defeat in 10, too many draws though and only 3 wins but they weren't losing games.
However they are now in a run of 4 defeats in 5 games and have conceded 2 in every one of those 5, no wins in 8 overall.
One crum of comfort for them Is they don't lose many at home, only 3, but they don't win many either (only 3).
They draw a lot (insert here we go again gif).
In terms of tactics they generally go with a back 4 and play 4-2-3-1, they have used a back 3 on occasion .
Despite the old reputation of Stoke they don't really subscribe to it anymore, the days of Ryan Shawcross hoofing the ball to Peter Crouch has gone.
They play the least crosses per game in the league and only us and Norwich play fewer long balls.
They rank pretty high for presses per game, top 8, and whilst it's quite difficult to find much information about the playing style (and I really am trying to learn this as I type) information on the manager and his style is understandably limited.
What I have learned aside from what I've typed is they are fairly unlucky in front of goal, they should have scored a few more goals. Unfortunately it's the opposite at the other end, they concede and they should concede more (highest xG against in the league) and concede the most shots on target per game in the league (keeper has been busy ).
Suggests maybe they have a habit of being caught in transition.
Not a possession side as such but as said above not a long ball hoof side so I suspect they try vertical sharp passes to break and when it works its great but when it doesn't they get caught short in defence hence the shots conceded and goals.
In terms of eye catching results, a win vs Blackburn and a draw vs Millwall but vs the top sides they lost them all apart from Blackburn, Boro, Sheffield United, Burnley, Sunderland all won and scored twice.
In terms of key players.
Experienced cb Ben Gibson is a well known name and very experienced player.
Offensively they have a few talented lads.
On loan Leicester striker Tom Cannon is having the season we hoped Joseph would have with 8 goals and a pretty accurate shooter with over 50% of his shots on target.
South Korean attacking midfielder Bae Jun-ho is top of the assist chart for Stoke with 5 and ranks top 70% in the Championship for successful dribbles per game and chances created.
Dutch winger Million Manhoef is probably the most impressive of the 3 though, 3 goals and 3 assists. He ranks even higher on the aforementioned stats than Bae Jun-Ho.
So a decent attacking trio they have.
But a side prone to leaving themselves open and paying for it.
A real opportunity in theory for us given the fixtures of our opponents.
But know how our away struggles can cost us these opportunities, we've seen it plenty last 18 months.
In terms of us will we see some rotation?
Has Amps got 2 starts in his legs in less than a week? Could we even see him in midfield if Struijk makes it? Farke praised Tanaka and Rothwell the other day but hinted that he felt they were partly responsible for our away struggles so with Amps back could we see one of Rothwell or Tanaka dropped?
Has Byram for that matter got 2 games in him? Schmidt always looks decent when given a chance.
Many feel Mateo Joseph needs to start away from home or the corpse of Patrick Bamford?
