Worse thing about tonight.

[Squid]

I don't think we need a Jacob type. I loved Claudio. And he was fantastic at breaking up play when we were up against superior opposition in the Prem. He could help slow the play down. That's not what we need niw. At this level we are largely up against inferior opponents who, like Stoke last night, wanted to slow the play down. We need players who can counter that with quick, accurate passing. Sawyers, Pereira etc were doing that a few weeks ago.

Into a brick wall, then Stoke just outmuscled us off the ball to start the process again over and over again.

We had that earlier in the season. But by quick, accurate passing we broke teams down. Last night we played into their hands by lumping balls into the box which they simply headed out.
I'm not sure how a Claudio type would have helped break them down. And they barely got in our half so a player like him wasn't needed to break up attacks by the opposition.

We have a technical player in Krov on the bench but he gets bullied in some games and attacks break down as a consequence. We only looked like mounting any serious challenge to Stoke at the start of the second half and then when Brunt came on. Stoke just Pulised us and we currently have no answer to teams that set out to frustrate us.

This is the real issue here. Our record against teams in the lower half, at home, is atrocious. 

This didn't matter when we were picking points up against the better teams, but since we've had a glut of playing more industrial sides, the chickens have come home to roost.