Saturday 22nd November Stoke v West Brom Last years top two Championship teams meet for the first time in the Premier League this weekend with Stoke being the home team.
Nearly all of Stoke’s points this season have come at home, with most of their goals coming from Rory Delap’s long throws (good job he’s in my fantasy team for their home games) on their shorter-than-average width pitch. Chelsea are the only visiting team to keep a clean sheet here, and Delap missed that game through injury! With West Brom’s defence looking poor at defending set pieces, Delap looks favourite to add another team to the list of successes this season, but he may need to avoid tough-tackling Paul Robinson if he still wants to be on the pitch to take them! This game might come too early for Andrew Davies, having been out with a knee injury all season, and Liam Lawrence is out for about a month more.
West Brom have won some more fans over this season with their attractive football, but it has lead them to being bottom of the league, having scored the fewest and conceded the most goals already this season. Widely expected to do better than Stoke and Hull this season, it hasn’t happened yet. Abdoulaye Meite and Kim Do-Heon made their returns last weekend. Scott Carson was involved in a mix up with John Terry that allowed Germany their equaliser on Wednesday night, so expect a big performance from him here to show why he was in the squad in the first place.
Stoke didn’t rely on Rory Delap’s long throws last season but beat West Brom 3-1 at the Britannia Stadium thanks to a Ricardo Fuller hat trick and drew 1-1 at the Hawthorns as Tony Pulis appears to have the upper hand on Tony Mowbray.
Best bet: Stoke to win 6/5
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