THE football changing room is often seen as a magical place where the worries and concerns of the outside world do not exist, but that's not quite the case.
In many respects the changing room and the stands mirror each other. Things that are being talked about by supporters are talked about just as much by the players too.
STRONG MEN: Tony Pulis no longer has lieutenants of the calibre of Danny Higginbotham and Rory Delap, inset, to help push his squad.
Stoke fans will have been looking down the fixture list this week wondering whether their team can get a win here or a draw there to ensure Premier League safety. It's a fair guess that the players will have been doing that too.
Everyone is working out the permutations because it is tight down there at the bottom of the Premier League right now, and Stoke are in a relegation scrap.
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I believe they will stay up because I think they have enough about them to get out of their current predicament, but it will be close
What Stoke have had since they were promoted into the top flight is a tough-as-nails mentality, and that is what they need to rediscover over the next six games. It will be heart as much as ability that decides their fate.
So perhaps it is at times like this that you realise the contribution of the big characters who have been in the Stoke camp over the last few years, such Rory Delap and Danny Higginbotham.
There are players who can win you a game with what they do with the ball ... and there are players who can win you a game by what they say. They can have a massive influence on a group which people might not always notice.
That is why Sir Alex Ferguson keeps his trusted players around him. They are the lieutenants who communicate things to their team-mates that sometimes the boss can not.
It was some of the bigger players, the lads who other players looked up to, that were affected worse than anyone else.
There were players who were the life and soul of the party when things were going well, but then took a couple of defeats badly.
It is very difficult to stop. If there are four or five players who feel nervous then that is nearly half of your side on a match day. The fight gets harder.
For example, there were probably doom-mongers hanging around Vale Park when they lost at Bristol Rovers last month who were furious when they found out the squad spent the next day at the Cheltenham Festival, but look what has happened since.
Other managers might train you hard and then take you out for dinner to talk things through over a couple of glasses of wine. It can be helpful and positive to get things out in the open, and you have to treat players like men.
You can put your arm around someone's shoulder or you can scream blue murder at them, and I'm not sure that any one method is better than the other.
In Stoke's case it comes down to Tony Pulis and his group. He needs to feel his own way through it. It is his squad, after all.
Aston Villa have that, and even Wigan to some extent, but Stoke are still in a better position because they started the season well. I would not swap places with the other two.
I still think that just one good performance can turn things around. That might even come against Manchester United on Sunday. I have been saying for the past 18 months that Stoke can never be complacent about being in the Premier League. If you get ahead of yourself you can soon end up on a slippery slope. You have to dig in every weekend.
Let's hope this has been a reminder of what the Premier League is all about. Apart from six or seven clubs, no one can take survival for granted.
Some times you have to realise that you need to change the dynamic of a club. That can happen anywhere from top to bottom.
Ferguson, Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes etc may have been at United for some time, but there have still been sweeping changes every now and then to keep things fresh, either with the backroom or playing staff.
Stoke has been a happy ship for five years, but sometimes change is good. Some big decisions need to be made in the summer whatever happens. For now, though, everybody needs to make sure the club is in the top flight when those decisions are made.
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