Stoke City have brought in Ciaran Clark after being left with only two fit defenders for last weekend’s game at Leicester
Mike Pejic believes Stoke City should have seen the problem coming instead after being left short of numbers in defence.
Stoke have brought in free agent Ciaran Clark after a bombardment of injuries left them with only two fit defenders for last weekend’s trip to Leicester, with Jordan Thompson and Josh Laurent filling in as emergency left-back and centre-half respectively.Alex Neil had been keen to sign another centre-back to take his stock up to four but ran out of time in a summer transfer window when he had already made 17 new signings. Now Ben Wilmot (knee) is likely to be out until Christmas while Michael Rose (groin) has missed the last two games so Clark has joined on a deal until the end of the season.Enda Stevens has missed the last month at left-back but, while Lynden Gooch, Junior Tchamadeu and Ki-Jana Hoever have all played full-back on either side, only deadline day Tchamadeu was still standing last week.
Left-back-turned-pundit Pejic said: “It was a gamble to go into the season without proper cover at centre-half.
“Alex Neil has had chance to write off players he didn’t want and shape the squad going forward. He let young Connor Taylor go, as well as Phil Jagielka, Morgan Fox and Aden Flint, which is fine if he doesn’t think they’re good enough, but he has to have cover. He has to make sure that Stoke are properly prepared for the challenges that come through the blood and thunder of a Championship season.
“Injuries happen. It is very unfortunate for Ben Wilmot but this is why you have a squad. You have to be as ready as you can be for every eventuality.
“You have to have wingers both sides, you have to have a target player, a player who can make runs behind, you have to have a 10 who pulls off, you have to have a sitting midfielder, attacking midfielders, full-backs and centre-backs.
“Your close season and pre-season is all about making sure that you have all these roles adequately covered and, for the amount of deals that we did, I think we left ourselves short at left-back and at centre-half. Even if we’ve been unlucky with the scale of injuries we have faced, that is a problem we could have seen coming.”
Clark, aged 34, made 11 appearances on loan at Sheffield United from Newcastle last season as they won promotion to the Premier League but he hasn’t started a match since the first game in January.
He has pretty much a career’s worth of experience in the top flight, however, and Stoke will need that in a rush of fixtures over the next few weeks.
Pejic said: “It’s your knowledge and decision making as a manager or recruitment department as to why you’ve brought him in. He’s there to do a job.
“You have players with different roles in the squad and there will be some, like Jagielka might have been, who could have been around the training area and changing room to pass on knowledge and experience and pass on the spirit.”
He added: “We’re coming into a big week when we come back from the international break (with matches against Sunderland, Leeds and Middlesbrough) but these weeks always come up, everybody is in the same boat.
“We can’t think of it as an excuse, we have to meet the challenge in front of us head on. We have to get ready for whatever is coming up, come up with the right decisions, come up with the answers. The ones with the best answers are the ones in the top six at the minute. We have to make sure we come up with them very soon.”
