Mark Robins is not hiding his belief in this season's Stoke City squad as they prepare for a trip to Derby County in front of another sell-out away end

Stoke City have taken two different routes to be on 16 points by this stage of Mark Robins’ first two full seasons as manager. It is fair to say that he is more encouraged and more excited by the second one.

“I thought we played all right, to be fair,” he said after the 10th game of 2025/26, a 1-0 win over Wrexham courtesy of Sorba Thomas’s cross-shot flying into the net. “I’m really pleased with the three points. I might not sound like it but I am.”

He actually sounded more excited after Stoke lost their 10th game of 2026/27, 3-2 to Middlesbrough on Tuesday night at the bet365 Stadium.

Sometimes underlying narratives can be explained through xG and sometimes you get a better idea by the reaction of a crowd, which has more nuance through its shared experience than can be programmed into a computer. Robins might make the same claim about himself as he approaches 900 matches as a manager.

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It’s clear that he and Stoke fans can sense that this squad is onto a better thing, with more competition and depth and strings to its bow than they had 12 months ago. That came across again in the pre-match press conference ahead of a trip down the A50 to take on injury-hit Derby County on Saturday.

“I think the performance levels have been brilliant to be honest,” he said. “To win and play that the way that we did with 10 men against Bolton on Saturday – and you look at the back of their result at Wolves on Tuesday night, it reflects how good a performance it was and the crazy nature of the Championship.

“Then to run as much as we did on Tuesday – it was almost 118km – their sprint distances were higher than ours but you can see from the way the game panned out why that was. Their press was strong and physically you’ve got to recover from that. We had a day off and running repairs. Today there will be an active recovery plan and making sure we’re in the best physical shape for tomorrow and then going into Saturday.

“Derby have played away in London on Wednesday so they have less time to recover and we’ve got a couple of days to really get ourselves in good shape for this next game in every way.”

Robins was asked – with 10 new faces in the squad after the summer transfer window, and a run of five wins, one draw and one defeat since it shut – how he was finding it working with a different group of players from day to day and match to match.

“The ability to make the right decisions at the right time is something you can work with,” he said. “The ability to come in and settle as quickly as they have, to understand and implement instructions and ideas that we think can help in different games and their general ability on and off the ball.

“It’s been different – and we’ve had some good players but just in terms of collectives. It’s really early days so we’re not getting carried away. Everyone wants to talk about the here and now. We demonstrated the other night that we were very, very close to picking something up against what I consider to be a top team.

“We demonstrated a discrepancy between where we are at the moment and where they are. That can be tactical or physical or a bit of both or also a mental thing and getting to that point will take a bit of time. As soon as the players have that belief within them that’ll be better.

“We’ve got to get to that point where we are comfortable in our own skins and we keep picking up those results.

“This division also has a habit of kicking you in the teeth and stopping you in your tracks but we’ve got a really good group that I know we can work with and improve on and improve with over time. It’s exciting. We’re in a good position, the recruitment has been really good.

“We’ve played five games in a system that maybe suits the players, three in a different system with different players – players have left – and it’s moved significantly. That’s exciting but you’ve got to keep it going. Everyone has to have the will to see it through.

“There is so much good to come out of the game the other night aside from the goals. The way we played, the way we came back into it, the way we tried to attack the game in the final part. We got one or two things wrong but we’re going to show them all the good things they are capable of and what they are achieving and the things they are doing in games that are going to more likely get results than not. We’ll keep building on that.”