Stoke City predicted XI vs Luton Town as Alex Neil faces big selection decision
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Alex Neil, who has tried to be consistent in his selection since taking over at Stoke City, is expected to consider a few changes for a three different reasons as Luton come to town.
First up, it’s the fourth game in 11 days with a fifth coming up on Sunday and some players will be more fatigued than others. Joe Bursik, Ben Wilmot, Phil Jagielka, Morgan Fox and Lewis Baker have started the last three.
Secondly, the manager has to find a winning formula at home, where they have only picked up two victories in nine attempts so far this season and they have lost the last three.
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Thirdly, Harry Souttar is back fit and available and sooner or later he is going make what will be his first Stoke appearance in more than a year. Ironically, he made his last against Luton – a 1-0 win at Kenilworth Road that left the Potters sitting fifth in the Championship after 17 matches of last season.
Neil is not biting on confirming publicly whether or not this will be the time when the big man gets the big call, coincidentally on the day that Australia will name their 26-man squad for the World Cup.
He said: “I don’t think there’s any doubt that Harry is capable but when you’re 6ft 6in… I’ll give you an example: Josh Tymon has been out for two batches of six weeks, 12 weeks in total, recently but Josh is quite small, nimble and a fit lad. Harry is 6ft 6in and he’s been out for 13 months. I don’t think they’re in the same ball park of being ready to play.
“Harry has now had four bounce matches. Is he capable of playing? Yes, I think so. The only little bit extra he’s going to get is from playing matches. That’s quite straightforward.
“I would never commit to saying any player is playing, irrespective of whether they were from Australia or anywhere else. I’ll pick the team that I think is most ready to try to win us the game.”
Jacob Brown, Liam Delap and Tariqe Fosu will be hoping for recalls after being used from the bench in a 2-1 defeat to Birmingham on Saturday. Dwight Gayle could come back in after not featuring.
Jack Bonham might think he deserves another crack in goal.
Neil said: “We’ve got some players coming back that haven’t had a lot of training and they might have done two, three or four games on the bounce and they’re naturally starting to fatigue and they’re tired. We need to utilise the squad.
“It’s not a case of people being dropped because they haven’t played well or this and that. Sometimes it’s because if we expect a 100 per cent performance, we need to be 100 per cent ready to perform. Naturally if you play that many games in quick succession it is tough physically and mentally.
“There will be a few with bumps and bruises but I’ll try to pick a team that has got enough freshness, quality and competitiveness in it to make sure we are in good shape to try to win.”
Predicted Stoke XI: Bonham, Sterling, Tymon, Wilmot, Souttar, Fox, Thompson, Baker, Powell, Brown, Gayle.
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