When Stoke City parted ways with manager Narcis Pelach after the Boxing Day defeat at home to league leaders Leeds United, there were very many supporters who would have expected to pick up many points in their next few matches.
Fast forward three days later and club legend Ryan Shawcross is celebrating his first win in charge as interim manager after a 1-0 victory over high-flying Sunderland.
Tom Cannon’s 92nd-minute winner sparked jubilant scenes in front of over 23,000 fans at the Bet365 stadium, and took The Potters four points clear of the relegation zone with just over half of the season played.
Speaking to StokeonTrentLive, Shawcross underlined the importance of a good home crowd:
He said: “I did an in-house interview pre-match and I was asked about Sunderland and I said they’re a good team, a young team… but straightaway in my mind I also thought, we’re at home and at home it’s a different mindset. It doesn’t matter who’s coming here, you can have a good go. If you have a good go, the fans will get behind you and that’s when it becomes a fortress. That’s what I was asking the players.”
He added: “We rode our luck at times and it would be naive of me to say we didn’t but I knew that would happen. I wanted us to press and get after the ball and I knew if we got it slightly wrong they would cut through us because they’re a really good team – but I just felt we would have opportunities. We did in the first 20 with Cannon and Lewis. I understood the risk but I’d rather risk and try to win than be boring. That was the plan. To be fair to the lads, in the day or so we’ve had, they’ve been really receptive to what I’ve asked and they executed it, for the majority of the game, really well.”
When asked about the job on a full-time basis, the ex-defender was keen to add that coaching is something he enjoys a lot, after he was previously in charge of the Stoke youth team:
“I love it,”. “It’s what I want to do. The time might be in the future, it might be in years to come, but this is what I want to do. Experiences like that made sure in my mind that this is what I want to do.”
Writers View
A surprising but very welcome victory for Stoke City following a dire run of nine league matches without victory, the perfect start for Ryan Shawcross at the helm.
Just how long he will have the interim job for is hard to tell, but if he is able to replicate yesterday’s unlikely win when they travel to Turf Moor when they play Burnley on New Year’s Day, then you can already imagine there will be serious talk over if he is the man to replace Pelach, a man who with over 400 appearances as a player, truly is Stoke City through and through.
