Stoke City

Stoke City v Reading

Sky Bet Championship
bet365 Stadium
Saturday 16th March 2019

3pm

Journey Time to the ground: 3 hours 30 minutes.  We left home at around 10:30am stopping to pick the tickets up on the way.  We had a quick stop at Norton Canes services to get some food from Leon on the way up and parked up in the car park at BFM Europe at a cost of £5.  From here it was a five minute walk to the ground.

Ticket Price: £25

Programme Price: £3.50 

This was my second visit to the bet365 Stadium, having previously tied in a visit with an open day at the nearby Keele University when I was at school.  We had tickets in the away end in the South Stand.  This is a single tiered all-seated stand which is shared with home supporters.  We were on the left-hand side of the stand next to one of the open corners and the wind and rain really blew in at us from this side!  The leg room and view of the pitch from this stand was very good.

To the left of the South Stand is the Franklyn Stand.  This is the main stand at the bet365 Stadium and is a large two-tiered all-seater stand which houses the team dug-outs at its front.  Opposite the South Stand is the Boothen End sponsored by Staffordshire University.  This is a single-tiered all-seater stand almost identical to the South Stand, the only difference being the right-hand side being an open corner.  To the right of the South Stand is the East Stand, another single-tiered all-seater stand.

The game was quite simply awful, with the weather definitely not helping matters.  Mid-way through the first-half Stoke struck the woodwork twice in as many minutes, first Tom Ince seeing his shot from 15-yards cannon off the upright before Sam Vokes looped a header off the cross-bar from Thibaud Verlinden's left-wing cross.

The second-half continued in the same scrappy manner with both teams struggling to create any clear cut chances and the game ended 0-0, which was probably to be expected considering Stoke's recent run of goal-less draws!

Attendance: 24,368 with 669 Reading fans.

Atmosphere:  The atmosphere was disappointing.  The away end was pretty subdued mostly due to the awful weather and although the Stoke fans did have a go at Delilah a couple of times, the poor game dampened the atmosphere somewhat.

Journey Time home: 3 hours 30 minutes.  As we were cold and wet, we dashed back to the car as soon as the game finished.  We stopped at Warwick Services on the way back down and got some KFC for dinner before arriving home around 8:30pm.

I didn't really enjoy my trip to Stoke.  The weather was cold and wet, the game was awful and the ground pretty bland and unnecessarily intimidating with the visiting fans being held in a cage and subjected to a sniffer dog search before entering the ground.  Not somewhere I'll look forward to visiting again.