Alex Neil, the manager of Stoke City, believes his team demonstrated “great potential” in the 2-1 victory over Sunderland, with several players making significant comebacks.
Ryan Mmaee, a striker, was among the Stoke players who were back from injury for Sunderland’s visit. Stoke entered the game just one spot above the relegation zone.
The first goal was scored by Mmaee, which Tony Mowbray thought should have been disallowed for handball. Neil thought his team demonstrated that they could compete with a “very good” Black Cats team.
“(We’ve had a run) in terms of the teams we were playing and where we found ourselves with our squad, that fact we had 11 players on the pitch and some had previously had no time together on the pitch, some had maybe spent 45 minutes together,” Neil explained.
You can clearly see that we’re a team that is going through a lot of change. I find that annoying because winning games is necessary to advance in the Championship. I recognize that.
“Our supporters have shown us a lot of love against Southampton, Leicester, and once more today, and I believe they recognize our current club’s situation.” It can be annoying at times because you want your team to succeed greatly, win all of its games, advance in the league, and, of course, we all want to be higher up than we currently are.
However, I believe it’s important to acknowledge where we are right now and our enormous potential. I thought we played really well today for extended periods of time, especially in the first half. After we scored the second goal, I gave it some more thought. For perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes, I believed we were playing excellently and should have won the match.
Naturally, towards the end of the game, Sunderland put more pressure on us. Those are, in my opinion, the best games to win, but we had to hang in there. You have to put in a lot of effort and project a genuine sense of fulfillment.
“I believed that today, despite a really strong side, we were more than
Neil added that since Luke McNally’s header in the opening minute of the second half, his team has attempted to capintalize on Suderland’s short stature at set pieces.
