Stoke 0-0 Bristol City: Goalless at the bet365 Stadium
Report and free match highlights from the Sky Bet Championship match between Stoke City and Bristol City at the bet365 Stadium on Saturday; Mark Robins' Potters and Michael Skubala's Robins battle to a point.
Saturday 24 October 2026 18:10, UK
Stoke and Bristol City played out a hard-fought 0-0 draw at the bet365 Stadium.
The visitors came closest to pinching a winner through Gibson Yah's first-half effort.
Mark Robins' men have lost just once in their last nine matches, while Bristol City avoided a third straight defeat following back-to-back 1-0 losses.
The stalemate sees the Robins sit 14th in the Championship table, while Stoke drop out of the play-off places to fall to ninth.
Stoke's one enforced change saw Luca Bombino replace the in-form Eric Bocat at left wing-back after the latter suffered a knee injury in the Potters' 1-0 win over Derby last time out.
There was much more movement in the Robins line-up, with the most eyebrow-raising of Michael Skubala's four changes seeing Brad Collins, once signed by Robins at Coventry, make his competitive debut in goal in place of Sam Tickle.
Lisav Eissat, Joe Williams and Lorent Tolaj replaced Rob Atkinson, Yu Hirakawa and Scott Twine as City changed to a 3-5-2 formation to match their in-form hosts.
Only West Ham had picked up more points than the 19 Stoke had accumulated since losing their opening three games of the season, and the hosts made the brighter start at a wet and windy bet365 Stadium.
Lamine Cisse latched onto Ben Wilmot's defence-splitting pass before blazing his effort high and wide inside the opening two minutes.
Wilmot then took advantage of some indecisiveness in the Bristol City defence, nipping in and firing his effort past the far post.
Much of Stoke's early good play had come down the right between Wilmot and Cisse, but when the latter was forced off injured after 20 minutes, the hosts' threat dwindled.
The Robins took 35 minutes to notch their first attempt on goal when Dom Ballard was played in by Eissat and cut inside before firing his effort off Bosun Lawal for a corner.
The best opening of the half was to come shortly after when Bristol City wing-back Rio Cardines found space down the right and cut back for Yah, who scuffed his effort wide from 12 yards out.
Lawal then fired over following Jack McGlynn's corner.
The visitors started the second half where they left off in the first, with former Stoke loanee Luke McNally heading Cameron Pring's cross narrowly wide eight minutes after the restart.
Justin Devenny had scored two goals for the Potters since his move from Crystal Palace without getting back on the scoresheet since early September, but he came agonisingly close to putting Stoke ahead when he almost got on the end of George Hirst's knockdown following McGlynn's corner.
At the other end, Ballard glanced Pring's corner over the bar before whistling an effort narrowly over the crossbar as the visitors continued to threaten.
As the clash ticked over into stoppage time, McGlynn's curling effort left Collins stranded in the Robins' goal, but flashed past the left-hand post as both sides were left to settle for a point.
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The managers
Stoke manager Mark Robins:
"It was really difficult. I can't be too critical and I don't want to be, because I don't think it's warranted. I think that we've tried to do everything that we could to get a goal, but I didn't think we were good enough.
"We move it in different areas and it becomes a bit samey and we don't learn from that. They've changed shape today, they've come for a difficult game and then the weather made it doubly so.
"We've tried everything but we've been in positions where we've taken a safe position to get on the ball rather than something a little bit more incisive.
"That's the only sort of slight disappointment, but when a team comes and sits like that, and it's the first time a team has come and done that, I think we've got to take some learning from it and where we've got to be positioned on the pitch.
"We had total control of the ball, total control of the game, but an easy option on it. Set plays we were dangerous, I thought it looked like we were going to score from one of them, I think we tried to negate their threat.
"To be fair to them, they've thrown bodies in front when they needed to and we didn't manage to get the winning goal, but if you can't win, don't lose."
Bristol City head coach Michael Skubala:
"A typical Championship, windy game of football. I thought it was a really good character performance from ourselves, I thought the game was difficult for both teams.
"We created some excellent moments in the game, some good box entries where we probably didn't have the last bit but I thought we came with a plan to set up and hit them on the counter-attack and I thought we did that well at times, so I'm really pleased with the performance and a good point on the road.
"We've been looking at it for a while to see if we can solidify, make ourselves stronger without the ball, but I thought the shape change was good, the lads were excellent in it and there was some really good performances.
"We knew how tough it would be because they've started the season very well here.
"They've got some really fast players on the top line, put some teams to the sword here, but I thought we defended very well and created some big chances.
"For us to defend and get our second clean sheet of the season is really important, to limit a Stoke team who have been on a really good run is also excellent, and I think we just needed to hit the target with some of our chances to turn it into a win."
