Tyler Martin's Stoke City Breakthrough Marks Significant Step

Tyler Martin’s name appeared on the Stoke City teamsheet almost quietly, but it marks a significant step. The 18-year-old, who arrived from Liverpool to join the under-21s in February, has been pulled into the senior picture after an eye-catching pre-season with the first team. His chance comes on the bench as Milan Smit heads out on loan to Darmstadt in Germany.

Back when Martin signed, youth coach Sam Stockley summed him up neatly: dynamic, quick, with an eye for goal and the versatility to play through the middle or out wide. Those are the tools that have pushed him closer to the senior squad far earlier than many expected.

Unusual Starts

Stoke aren’t strangers to unusual starts to a campaign, even if the club is more commonly associated with the grind of a league opener. This year’s curtain-raiser again breaks with that tradition, echoing a handful of oddities from the past.

There was the League Cup tie against Blackpool in 2020 that opened the season in front of empty stands, a bleak product of its time. Go back further and the memories are far brighter: the Europa League adventure in 2011, when ties home and away against Hajduk Split set the tone before a Premier League opener against Chelsea.

Roll the clock all the way back to 1972 and the story becomes even stranger. Stoke had just staggered out of a gruelling 70-game 1971/72 season, only to be thrown straight back into action with what was technically still part of that campaign – an FA Cup tie played after the final and just a week before the new top-flight season began.

On August 5, at St Andrew’s, they faced Birmingham City in a third-place play-off, a curious fixture born of a five-year FA Cup experiment. Stoke had lost a controversial semi-final to Arsenal four months earlier. Leeds had already lifted the cup at Wembley on May 6. Yet here were Stoke and Birmingham, summoned back for one last, slightly awkward epilogue.

A crowd of 25,841 turned up and were rewarded with a drab goalless draw that only came to life in its finale: the first penalty shoot-out in English domestic football history.

Tony Waddington used the game to hand debuts to new signings Geoff Hurst and Jimmy Robertson, who under normal circumstances would have been cup-tied. Robertson’s appearance added a twist of irony – he had already been knocked out of that same competition in the fourth round by Birmingham while at Ipswich.

The shoot-out itself played out under rules that now feel from another era. Goalkeepers were not allowed to move their feet before the kick, and John Farmer pushed the limits. He was booked for doing so twice, yet still managed to save from Tommy Carroll, who then smashed his retaken effort over the bar. Farmer also kept out Bobby Hope, only for Hope to score at the second attempt. Waddington stormed onto the pitch to protest, but referee Vincent James stood firm, insisting the keeper had been warned often enough.

At the other end, Birmingham’s Paul Cooper relied on mind games. He swung his arms, leaned to one side and unsettled takers – a routine that would later serve him well at Ipswich and Leicester. It worked here too, as he denied Jimmy Greenhoff and Peter Dobing. Stoke’s reward for finishing fourth in the FA Cup? A tankard.

That game quietly closed the book on the third-place play-off experiment. The FA shelved it, and English football moved on. Stoke did too, responding a week later by winning their first league match of the new season at home to Crystal Palace.

From a tankard in 1972 to a teenager like Tyler Martin stepping up in 2024, Stoke’s habit of starting seasons a little off-script shows no sign of disappearing.