In the previous part of my blog, I told you about the fact that this would be a blog about me going to different cities and asking people their opinion on Stoke’s last result or about their current form. Unfortunately I can’t continue with that idea. Reason for that is that Stoke isn’t really a well known club in Holland like Manchester United is.

When I was in one of the cities I would ask like 100 people about their opinion on Stoke. Unfortunately from the 100 people that answered the question, only 5 of their answers were actually useable for an article. So i decided that I would stop with the city trip blog idea. In this part of the blog I went around my hometown and asked people that i know really well about Stoke this season and their opinions on the Dutch players like Martins Indi, being one of our best players this season. Or Pieters who is somehow not selected for the Dutch national team.

About last season…

The first person that I went to was of course my uncle. A massive Premier League fan who knows a lot about Stoke. He even visited the FA Cup final which we played in against Manchester City (he’s a Man City fan). He told me the basic things that I should know when I became a Stoke supporter. Like our best players etc. When I asked him if he thought that Stoke have had a good season. He looked at me in discus. He said “ben je verdomme gek geworden?” Which means “are you fucking crazy?” I didn’t even get the time to reply. He immediately started his rant about Mark Hughes, and the horrible decision’s he’s made this season. “loaning Bojan to Mainz? What the hell is his problem” when he was done ranting, which took him around 10 minutes. He didn’t have any time to answer the rest of my questions. I could only ask him one more question. Which was “describe the season in one word.” His answer said enough. “horrendous.”

After that I went straight to one of my good friends(an Arsenal fan), he follows Stoke just like me and watches their matches as well. Which might be because of me. Instead of ranting and talking gibberish about Stoke. He answered my questions like a normal person should. He was very disappointed in all of the players, “it felt like something was missing the whole season” he also told me that Hughes didn’t even try to solve that problem. He even loaned out one of the best players, Bojan. When I asked him about next season, he wasn’t very positive. He said that if we don’t start of the season with at least 9 points from our first 6 games. That we might be facing a relegation battle. And since our first 6 fixtures are against really good opponents. He doesn’t have that much belief in Stoke next season.

The Dutch players…

When I asked both my uncle and my friend about the Dutch players in Stoke. They had to think very long. We started with the deserved “player of the year” Martins Indi. They had very mixed opinions on him. “He played great for Stoke last season, but in the Dutch national team He just looks very clumsy.” Said my uncle. And I have to say that I totally agree with him. He looks like such a great defender in the Premier League. But when the international break comes and he’s starting for Holland, he plays horrendous. Way to many mistakes and not even half of what he is at Stoke. Not only in big matches against big teams like France. But also against teams like Ivory Coast. My friend told me that he loved him. It’s been one of his favourite players since last world cup in Brazil. And when he scores he always does the thing with his eyes which Indi did in the 5-1 win from Spain. But he basically had the same opinion about him being good at Stoke and not in the national team. So I won’t be going any deeper into that.

Unfortunately I couldn’t ask my uncle for his opinions on Pieters this season. All because of his way to long rant. But on the bright side, I could still ask my friend. Instead of me asking him a question, he started asking questions to me. “what is your opinion on Pieters Henri?” I told him that I thought it was dreadful that he hasn’t been called up for the national team yet. He played amazing in the first half of the season. And I admitted that he hasn’t been to great in the second half of the season, especially in the last 6 matches. But that still doesn’t make him worse then the current left-backs Daley Blind or Joel Veltman. He said “that’s it”

We didn’t really talk much about Afellay. He was injured for the biggest part of the season and didn’t do anything to talk about when he was playing. Sorry for that.