Stoke City 1993-94 Season (Part 2) Football to cure insomnia...

A look back at the second part of Stoke City's 1993-94 campaign with photo's, video's and newspaper articles from the season plus music from 1993 and 1994. With Lou Macari now at Celtic and Mark Stein at Chelsea, the Stoke City board had the unenviable task of replacing a Manager and player that had provided so much joy to the fans over the last two campaigns. Macari's assistant Chic Bates was in caretaker charge of the team and was in the running for the job along with Club Legend Denis Smith and former Crystal Palace Manager Steve Coppell. Bates won all three of his games in charge as Caretaker Manager but the board opted to appoint Joe Jordan who had ironically recently left his job as Liam Brady's assistant at Celtic. Stoke's home form remained really strong but it was the away results and dire performances that became a major source of frustration with the fans. Jordan's persistence of playing five at the back did not pick up enough points on the road as goals and even shots on goal became scarce too. Frustration turned to anger when the same tactics were employed at home to non-league Bath City in a 0-0 draw. The quality deadline day signings of Mark Walters (Liverpool), Micky Adams (Southampton) and Wayne Biggins (Celtic) added new impetus to the team and performances did improve but it was just too little, too late. Stoke finished the season just outside the play-offs and it was a case of what might have been had Joe Jordan not played such rigid, defensive football away from home. This was also the season that saw the passing of Stoke's greatest ever Manager, Tony Waddington. Everyone associated with the club was deeply saddened when the news broke on January 31st, 1994 that he had passed away. Tributes flooded in and supporters turned the main entrance at The Victoria Ground into a shine of wreathes, scarfs and mementoes. Thousands of Stokies lined the streets for Tony's funeral to pay their respects to the man who had lead the club to its greatest ever triumph in 1972. #stokecity #thepotters #joejordan #tonywaddington