Stoke are looking for a third straight win and to cement a top 7 place which will vindicate the big squad investment this season, they "edged" woeful Aston Villa 2-1 on Saturday, but the scoreline was not a true reflection of the game, the Villans had one attempt of note and did not earn a corner and City could easily have won by 3-4 goals and it was as easy a single goal victory as you will see, ahead of that I wrote ...............
These two teams have had a long 13-14 days to rest ,recover and reflect on very different results, City ended a poor spell with a very good performance and 3-1 win at Bournemouth and will want to follow up here at the Britannia where they are normally strong, but put in a dismal showing in a 3-0 loss to Everton in their last home game, ahead of which my preview looked a lot like this ............
Injury problems for both teams today and City , who are coming off a poor loss at Manchester United in midweek are very short of options in central defence, with Ryan Shawcross, Geoff Cameron and Marc Wilson injured and Philipp Wollscheid who left the field injured at Old Trafford is subject to a late test, but did train yesterday.
Everton got back on track with a 3-0 defeat of a lifeless Newcastle United team on Tuesday, but will face sterner opposition offensively today and will have to do so without goalkeeper Tim Howard and the much sought after John Stones. Prolific striker Romelu Lukaku will also be subject to a late decision, but Roberto Martinez will be pleased they scored three without contribution from their top scorer in midweek and two of the goals came after he left the pitch at half time. The 15 goal front man is determined to play though and was said to have put in a full training session yesterday and unless there is a reaction, surely he will feature.
The Toffees are hoping that new striker Oumar Niasse will have his paperwork completed in time to make his debut, which would be timely if Lukaku misses out, but at best he will be on the bench.
City are likely to play record signing Giannelli Imbula after the midfielder's £18.3m move from Porto, he trained with the squad this week and whilst boss Mark Hughes wanted to give him more time, the club need him now, after a poor run of results. The hosts won a thriller of a reverse fixture by the odd goal in seven and with both teams being defensively weaker today, it is easy to see if not a repeat of that, then certainly goals, Everton have scored in 11 of their last 12 away starts, averaging 1.85 goals per game
Everton are a bit of an enigma and it is hard to understand fully why they have only posted seven wins all season, they are so much better than that and their 3-7-1 away record is a story of so many missed opportunities. With their pace on the counter, they are at least as good (potentially) away from home as anyone in the Premier League and they could easily have an additional 8-10 road points . I guess you could say similarly about their form at Goodison Park, but it is away from Liverpool that they can play to their real strengths and with the loss of Ryan Shawcross huge ( Stoke have conceded ten goals in the last 283 minutes he has been off the field), especially with limited options, I have to take the visitors to record a revenge win for the home defeat to the Potters, but must admit to being tempted by the "over".
They have finally learned to win sans Shawcross and Imbula (see both above) was very inluential against the Cherries and with Marko Arnautovic (pictured) back today and Bojan looking to get involved, those three , plus Xherdan Shaqiri give City flair options that most mid table teams just do not have and which we do not traditionally associate with Stoke , or at least not the squad built by Tony Pulis.
They will want to put on a bit of a show for supporters after the Everton debacle and Villa, who were as poor as any EPL team you will ever see at home to Liverpool (0-6) in their last outing, look the ideal opponents.
United are expected to put up more fight than we saw from Villa, but they have lost their last six on the road and conceded ten in the last three and those games came against teams below City in the league table. They have kept one clean sheet in 11 home and away starts and have are 2-2-16 in their last 20 EPL road outings and have been terrible this season through the middle third of games, 0-14 (scored conceded) away from home between the 31st and 60th minute ! The visitors have not played for 18 days and have been for some warm weather training, not sure that is the best preparation for a cold night at the Britannia Stadium and United have lost five of six after a ten day plus break, the four away games by an 11-0 goal difference. City have won the last three h2h meetings here and a fourth looks the most likely outcome, they really cranked up the pressure on Saturday immediately after the break, a period when as already discussed that United struggle and they can take charge ahead of the hour mark.
Good Luck.
