Michael O’Neill speaks out on Stoke City frustration

Stoke City had an average season finishing 14th in the league and failing to make any progress on their position from the previous season, picking up just two more points than they did in 2020/21. 

This is especially disappointed given the fact they had broken into the top six earlier in the season and a chance to compete in the play-offs looked like a real possibility.

This season will be Michael O’Neill’s third in charge, so the manger will be hoping his side can show significant improvement in order to progress.

O’Neill is well aware of the importance of an improvement as he labelled his side’s season as frustrating, telling Stoke-on-Trent Live when asked to reflect on the campaign: “[It’s been] Very frustrating really, from where we were sitting in November time.

“At the time you never really know how pivotal Harry’s [Souttar] injury was going to be and we lost Harry and Joe Bursik in that international window at the same time.

“Then we had a difficult period after that or that was the start of maybe when we had a lot of inconsistency.

“The frustration was that I didn’t think we were outplayed this season but ultimately we didn’t win enough games. We have to look at why that was. We were in winning positions a lot of times and couldn’t see through.

“I feel a little bit that when we were ahead but the opposition got level we didn’t look like we could go and win it again. We looked a little bit unsure and a little bit short on confidence at times in those situations and we have to be a bit stronger.

“I think maybe people didn’t realise that we had a lot of players in our team that didn’t have loads of Championship games. Look at Josh [Tymon] and Tyrese [Campbell] and Jacob [Brown], they’re building their games all the