The latest Birmingham City news from Birmingham Live provides the dirt on Stoke City’s management candidate Alex Neil.
Alex Neil is a staunch believer that possession-based, aggressive football is the key to advancement. The Scot appears to be aligned with Birmingham City’s owners, Knighthead, who are looking for their fourth manager since Tony Mowbray’s departure.
Neil, a former manager of Norwich City, Preston, Sunderland, and Stoke City, has surfaced as a possibility for the Blues job. Neil, who is still only 42 years old, has managed almost 450 games since starting his coaching career with Hamilton in 2013.
Neil has three promotions on his resume, including one from League One to Sunderland in 2022, but he comes with the proviso of a difficult 16 months in charge of Stoke. Neil lost 31 of his 66 games in the Potteries and was fired in December, with Stoke 20th in the Championship.
In explaining how Neil’s tenure unravelled, Stoke reporter Pete Smith said: “I think his biggest problem with supporters was that the first season ended so sluggishly; there hadn’t been enough promise to buy him the time he needed for things to come together. There were a few occasions when it appeared that everything had clicked. Stoke beat Sunderland, Leeds, and Middlesbrough in a week in October, and I remember talking to him at the conclusion of that week, and he said, ‘We’ve got to make sure this isn’t a fluke. They didn’t win another game after that.
It was a matter of when rather than whether. They probably lost three or four in a row. They lost a tight game at QPR due to a questionable sending off, followed by a game at Plymouth in which Stoke took the lead but lost 2-1 in the 97th minute. If Stoke had won, there would have been a wild celebration in the away end. Neil had to walk past the away end at Plymouth, which made him upset. They were receiving a lot of stick, and he admitted he didn’t know what to do. He believed applauding the away supporters who had made the long journey would be patronizing, so he kept his head down and tried to go by everyone.
“In the days that followed, you could see he was aware that his days were few. As it turned out, they lost at home the next week to Sheffield Wednesday, and in the press conference that followed, he apologized to the supporters and the chairman for being unable to provide solutions.”
While Neil was not the answer for Stoke, there is enough to suggest he is a viable contender for the Blues. He took Norwich to the Premier League in his first season in England and nearly led Preston to the play-offs in his debut season at Deepdale. Neil managed Preston to seventh, fourteenth, ninth, and thirteenth place finishes, respectively.
His sides have always attempted to dominate the ball and play on the front foot. Even Stoke, despite its reservations in 2022/23 during Neil’s first season, averaged 52.8 percent possession per game and 12.7 shots – numbers that should have propelled them higher than 16th place.
Smith continued, “He often remarked that he would love to witness a game between teams wearing neutral colors and know which was his team, playing incredibly aggressive, rapid, straight football. He believed that having possession was the best approach to win the Championship, as it allowed him to hold the ball and capitalize on it. He never had a striker who could regularly score goals for Stoke, which was a major issue. It’s been a problem for both him and the club.
“He was convinced at Stoke that he needed to play with more style than he could at Preston. He was sure that at Preston, they would celebrate a tenacious 1-0 victory more than he would at Stoke, which I do not believe was accurate. Stoke fans are not used to winning football matches. If he could have won games in any way, he would most likely still be there.
“He was really focused on tactics. One of his critiques at Stoke was that he was so focused on tactics that he would change his team based on the opposition rather than relying on his own squad to imprint their mark on the game. To that, he would most likely respond that he did not have the players at Stoke, particularly in his first season, who he could rely on to play exactly how he wanted. And in the second season, he was unable to bring them together enough
“When we had a couple of excellent months, football was something we could really get behind. Counter-attacking quickly, winning the ball back, and understanding what to do with it. I’m sure he’ll want to play like that at his next club as well.”
