Burnley
Blackburn Rovers
Coventry City
Derby County
Leeds United
Luton Town
Middlesbrough
Millwall
Norwich City
Portsmouth
Sheffield Wednesday
Sheffield United
QPR
Stoke City suffered their first defeat of the season on Tuesday and Mark Robins has admitted he knew performance levels weren’t going to be ‘quite there’ due to his team selection.
The Potters hosted League One Bradford City in the second round of the Carabao Cup and fell to a shock 3-0 defeat. Will Swan, Bradley Halliday and George Lapslie all got on the scoresheet for the West Yorkshire side as they continued their impressive unbeaten start to the season.
After winning all four of their opening games, the hosts made 10 changes from their 2-1 win over Southampton at the weekend. That included putting Maksym Talovierov and Ashley Phillips at centre-half despite their lack of minutes over pre-season and starting three academy graduates. Bosun Lawal is the only player to have stayed in the line-up from the Saints clash.
While Robins hoped for more from his side, he confessed that despite wanting a ‘good cup run’, he felt he had to rest his usual starting XI due to the quick turnaround before Stoke’s Championship clash against West Brom.
Mark Robins thinks picking strongest side for Carabao Cup would have been ‘ridiculous’
Speaking after the heavy defeat to Bradford, Robins admitted he had to use the fixture to allow his less-used players to get some game time.
He said: “This competition is mainly [making a host of changes] at this stage of it. You’ve got to get minutes into people against a really good side who are desperate to go and win. You’ve got to be equally hungry to go and compete in a game and we just weren’t there, we weren’t at it.
“[Bradford] ended up getting that extra energy and boost, backed by a vocal support who were really good for them tonight. We couldn’t give our supporters anything to sing about. It was actually very similar to the Walsall game. We were really lacklustre. We were lucky we went through then, and Jack [Bonham] being the hero on the night and saving a penalty and scoring one masked a really poor performance.
“We know what you’re likely to get, hoping for more but understanding performance levels aren’t going to be quite there because of the team I picked. I could have gone different. I could have gone and picked my strongest side but that would have been ridiculous.”
- READ MORE – Championship transfer round-up: Middlesbrough make moves, Millwall swoop and Bilal El Khannouss twist
Robins’ side face West Bromwich Albion on Saturday in the early kick-off slot, and the Potters boss highlighted the short turnaround time for his players to recover when explaining his team selection.
The 55-year-old has a history of taking competitions seriously after getting Coventry City all the way to the semi-finals of the FA Cup against Manchester United in 2024, and he emphasised how much he would have liked to have gone on another cup run.
“That’s my stance on it because we have a 12.30pm kick-off on Saturday which is massively important to us,” he said. “I’m not saying this wasn’t and I don’t want to do this. All the games we play are important. I’m not sat here saying we weren’t bothered about it because we were, but I’ve got to park it and move on from this as quickly as we can and prepare for Saturday.”
He added: “My main positive is that it’s ended and we can concentrate on Thursday and being really competitive against a really good West Brom team and not having a hangover from this because there doesn’t need to be.
“It’s just circumstances. It’s horrible. You want a really good cup run and you want good performances all the time but it’s just not feasible at this moment in time so you just have to move on from it.”
Stoke are top of the Championship going into game week four, with Middlesbrough on the same points in second and his former side Coventry in third after their 7-1 demolition of Queens Park Rangers on Saturday.
Bradford City win at Stoke City for the first time since 1987 as Bantams extend unbeaten run
Bradford are breaking all sorts of new ground thanks to the incredible start to their return to League One.
Currently sitting fourth in the third tier, Tuesday’s victory marks the 50th win under manager Graham Alexander, doing so in the joint-quickest time in the club’s history going back to 1908.
It was also the first time the Bantams had won away at Stoke since 1987.
The League One side are now unbeaten across their opening seven games for the first time since 1980/81. They have also beaten two sides from higher tiers in a League Cup campaign for the first time since 2012/13.