Stoke turned in one of their poorest performances for some time as we lost to Fulham by two goals to nil on an afternoon that many would be happy to forget.

Stoke got back to winning ways and beat Bolton at a respectable canter as Owen Coyle’s men continued their dismal away form at a windswept Britannia. In a game that threatened to be dominated by the almighty gust that was blowing through the ground, it was Stoke who managed to come to terms with the conditions more ably as they ran out comfortable 2-0 winners on the day.

It’s fair to say that this window has been a quiet one so far, it hasn’t really kicked into life yet but it’s still early days and as always things will get more and more frantic as we near the end of the month.

So we went to Old Trafford and lost, no real surprise there, the difference this time was the margin by which we trailed. In seasons past we have been hit for 5 and 4 respectively but this time that was reduced to 1, perhaps more tellingly the Man Utd players wasting time and fans whistling towards the end tells a different story for the performance of the current Stoke team. It could, however, have been so different for us without the continued ineptitude shown by Collins who almost single handedly undid a lot of the hard work done on the night to leave the Potters faithful leaving Old Trafford proud yet ultimately frustrated.

Like most over the festive period, I had over indulged and was sick of the sight of chocolate so was hoping that the Toffees wouldn’t add to that for our first game of 2011 (straight from a cracker) All was to be well though as Stoke got back to winning ways to start the New Year with a bang by convincingly beating the blue half of Merseyside 2-0.