Potters have the chance to finish year with a bang

RIGHT then Stoke City, it's time to pull up your socks and finish 2025 like you mean business.

- By Mike Pejic

It's been a difficult few weeks and now we have three out of four games at home to take us up to the new year.Hold nothing back and make sure you don’t let this chance pass us by. Games will be tough, of course they will be, but we're at home and it's time to show if we're serious or not.

There are question marks when a team slips from second to eighth and I do not want to see four or 5/10 performance levels like we had at Sheffield United last weekend. Teammates can't accept that from one another and each one has to take responsibility to lift their pal as well as keep themselves in check. Fire bullets at each other if it's needed.

Case in point, those free headers for Mark McGuinness at set-pieces at Bramall Lane. You're lucky if you get a warning sign. If you get one and you don't take heed of it then more fool you. He was first to the ball again and again in that first-half, which is unacceptable.

Every set play is a goal scoring opportunity and you have to be switched on, just like you have to be in your defending in open play and when you're attacking.