Stoke City's record in London and against old managers examined but Mark Robins wasn't quite having it being a fact of life
08:20, 22 Oct 2025Updated 08:29, 22 Oct 2025
Peter Smith
Peter has reported on Stoke City for The Sentinel and StokeonTrentLive since 2013, following the club in the Premier League, Championship and beyond, including trips to Singapore, Germany, France, Croatia and Switzerland. He has been watching Stoke since 1990.
Tomas Rigo sums up Stoke City's night at Millwall.
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Tomas Rigo sums up Stoke City's night at Millwall.(Image: Getty Images)
Stoke City paid the price for conceding two poor goals as the Championship’s tightest defence was breached too easily at Millwall. It’s only the third defeat of the season but another loss in London and another against a familiar face – and a tough week continues with a trip to Portsmouth on Saturday. Here are the talking points from The Den, setting the scene before Mark Robins sets out his thoughts.
Stoke’s capital punishment
Stoke’s record in London over the last decade is dire. Across 41 league trips to the capital following a brilliant Bojan-inspired win at Spurs in 2014, Stoke have won one, drawn 13 and lost 27, scored 27 and let in 80.
The odd one out was at QPR in December 2021, when Mario Vrancic made one for Tyrese Campbell and scored the other himself in a 2-0 victory. Adam Davies saved a penalty that day too, the first meaningful time a Stoke keeper had done that in a league game for eight years.
But only one Stoke player has scored at Millwall in the previous 20 years. Romaine Sawyers broke the deadlock in 2021 before going on to lose 2-1. They now haven’t scored in seven out of eight visits.
Still, more than 1,000 Stoke supporters signed up for a night in The Den’s away end, knowing that those rare moments are made all the sweeter by the pain. We’re not quite sure it evens it out.
Stoke’s record against their old bosses
For one reason or another, Stoke have had plenty of fixtures against former managers over the last 12 years – and Tony Pulis’s record against the Potters perhaps increases the dread of these kind of occasions. Pulis won eight, drew seven and lost none of 15 games against Stoke, although the first two of that set were as Gillingham boss, before his near-decade in the Potteries.
Alex Neil has now won six of his last seven matches against Stoke, sandwiching his 16-month reign at the bet365 Stadium.
Gary Rowett has won six and drawn three of 10 games against Stoke too so that will be something to try to address at Oxford in a fortnight.
Tony Pulis: Plymouth 2 Stoke 1 (Oct 2005), Stoke 0 Plymouth 0 (Feb 2006), Crystal Palace 1 Stoke 0 (Jan 2014), West Brom 1 Stoke 0 (Mar 2015), Stoke 0 West Brom 1 (Aug 2015), West Brom 2 Stoke 1 (Jan 2016), Stoke 1 West Brom 1 (Sept 2016), West Brom 1 Stoke 0 (Feb 2017), West Brom 1 Stoke 1 (Aug 2017), Stoke 0 Middlesbrough 0 (Nov 2018), Middlesbrough 1 Stoke 0 (April 2019), Sheffield Wednesday 0 Stoke 0 (Nov 2020)
Mark Hughes: played none.
Paul Lambert: Stoke 2 Ipswich 0 (Dec 2018); Ipswich 1 Stoke 1 (Feb 2019)
Gary Rowett: Millwall 2 Stoke 0 (Oct 2019); Stoke 0 Millwall 0 (Nov 2020); Millwall 0 Stoke 0 (Sept 2020); Stoke 1 Millwall 2 (April 2021); Millwall 2 Stoke 1 (Oct 2021); Stoke 2 Millwall 0 (March 2022); Millwall 2 Stoke 0 (July 2022); Stoke 0 Millwall 1 (Feb 2023); Millwall 1 Stoke 0 (Aug 2023); Stoke 0 Oxford 0 (Jan 2025)
Nathan Jones: Luton 0 Stoke 2 (Oct 2020), Stoke 3 Luton 0 (Feb 2021), Luton 0 Stoke 1 (Nov 2021), Stoke 1 Luton 2 (Feb 2022), Stoke 2 Luton 0 (Nov 2022)
Michael O’Neill: played none.
Alex Neil: Millwall 1 Stoke 0 (Mar 2025), Millwall 2 Stoke 0 (Oct 2025)
Steven Schumacher: played none.
Narcis Pelach: played none.
Taking a punch on the chin in the Championship
This was Stoke’s just second ever mid-week league game at Millwall – and the first was only because a Saturday match was rearranged due to Ireland under-21 call-ups for Clive Clarke and James O’Connor.
It wasn’t an impossible task but no one could suggest it wasn’t a tough one in a tough week, with a Saturday lunchtime trip to Portsmouth coming up next. It was why winning against Wrexham was so important.
They still left London in the top six and it was put to Mark Robins that sometimes the Championship throws up a punch to the chin that you just have to take as well as you can. He wasn’t quite having it.
Bad nights are an inescapable part of this division but the manager said it with a note of certainty that Stoke are on a journey where nights like this one will be limited.
“I’ve got to say that I’m really not happy to take it on the chin,” he said. “But that’s all I can do. Over time things like this will happen less frequently. We’ve got another test coming up too. We’ve got two away games back to back, we won’t be back until 4 in the morning and then we’ve got to go to Portsmouth for a 12.30pm kick-off. This is the Championship and it’s why everyone talks about it being a marathon. We’ve got to recover as well as we possibly can do and come up with a way of beating Portsmouth.”
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