Manchester City v Stoke City match preview

Following Wednesday's 2-1 victory over Newcastle, Mark Hughes have quietly strung a four match unbeaten streak and are poised at ninth in the table. While criticism rains down on Eastlands from many, the Citizens have made solid moves this transfer season with the additions of Craig Bellamy and Nigel de Jong to their lineup.

Tony Pulis' Stoke City are in the fight of their Premier League lives, tied for the bottom of the table with twenty-one points but have consistently put forth a good effort in front of their supporters at Britannia.


Prior to the match, Mark Hughes commented on the need for more consistency and better play away from Eastlands:

“Our away form is not as good as our home form which you can reasonably expect, but we should have picked up more points on our travels given the games we have played.

“We have to look to be positive against Stoke, it’s going to be difficult because they have a real, physical presence. Maybe that was evident on Wednesday night, when at times we struggled when we did not have a big presence up front.

“But we can cause problems in different ways with our movement and technical ability so we’re hopeful we can cause Stoke problems, and get on the track of winning away games in the league.”

“We’ve lost Dunnie’s presence as well, but ahead of the back four we are a little lacking in height – maybe not so great going into a game against Stoke! But we are playing well at the moment, and we need to impose our game on them rather than the other way around.”

For the match, Man City is anticipating both Shaun Wright-Phillips and Pablo Zabaleta to be available after suffering injuries in the prior match while while Stoke will go forward missing Andy Wilkinson and Abdoulaye Faye.