Biking to keep fit for Stoke

I haven’t been involved recently and it´s been disappointing. I have been in the squad but not on the bench. It´s doing my head in a bit. It´s frustrating enough being on the bench but when I´m not even making that, well…it gets a bit difficult.

I´m supposed to be playing reserve team football but our last two games have been called off due to bad weather – we´ve stepped things up in training a bit to compensate but everyone trains together so you do the same things as all the other lads who have been playing. The only way of getting match fit is by playing games and you can´t really replicate it in training.

It is hard to keep your spirits up when you are going in and training like normal but then not doing anything on matchdays. But we have got a big squad at the moment and there are a lot of players who aren’t playing. I bet they are just as frustrated as I am. The most important thing isn´t who´s on the bench and who´s not - we just need to make sure we stay up.

We´ve got a few suspensions at the minute, so maybe I´ll be able to get into the side in coming weeks. There have been a few red cards recently and it´s something we need to sort out. In total, Stoke players have been shown five red cards this season. We can´t keep having players sent off in every game because it´s costing us.

Matty Etherington and Rory Delap have had sendings off recently and they´re not dirty players – it´s been out of character for them. The tackles have been nothing malicious and I just hope we sort ourselves out and don’t get any more.

James Beattie has come into the side and he´s had an instant impact. In his first game he set up a goal against Chelsea, he scored against Tottenham and then he scored against Manchester City a week later, so he´s been doing really well. I think he´ll be instrumental in keeping the side up. He´s already got two in four so he´s played a big part already.

We´ve got a few days off this weekend, due to the FA Cup fixtures. I might go down to London to do some sightseeing or I might look into buying a mountain bike and get out on that. Near where I live there are loads of woods and I want to do something active to make up for not playing. I can´t really go for a run because running on concrete kills your knees so I´ll be able to work my legs but not put stress on my joints. I can´t take up BMXing again unfortunately, that’s a bit too dangerous and I don’t think the club would be happy about it…

Thanks for visiting my site, keep a look out for answers to the questions you have been sending in - I´ll get them all answered in the next day or so.

Cheers, Michael