Stoke City vs. Man City
Venue: Britannia Stadium
Kick off: 12:30pm
Pep Guardiola will look to continue his 100 per cent start to his time in charge of Manchester City when they take on Stoke City at the Britannia Stadium in Saturday’s lunchtime Premier League kickoff.
The hosts opened their campaign with a draw against newly-promoted Middlesbrough, and will be hopeful of springing a surprise this weekend to claim their first win of the season.
When the fixture lists were released, Stoke will have targeted their opening match of the campaign as a good chance to get some early points on the board.
As it was, though, the Potters were forced to settle for a point against the newly-promoted Middlesbrough, with Xherdan Shaqiri’s 67th-minute strike cancelling out Alvaro Negredo’s debut opener.
Upon his arrival in England, Guardiola declared that his motivation for leaving Bayern Munich was the desire to test himself in another league and against another style of football.
While Stoke are no longer quite the long-ball bruisers they once were, the fixture list has certainly given Guardiola what he wanted early on with opening matches against Sunderland and the Potters.
Victory at home to the Black Cats via a penalty and an own goal is not exactly the swashbuckling start to Guardiola’s reign that many would have expected, but it is still early days in the Spaniard’s revolution and the players are sure to improve as they increase their understanding of the manager’s philosophy.
Stoke possible starting lineup: Butland, Bardsley, Shawcross, Wollscheid, Pieters, Imbula, Allen, Shaqiri, Bojan, Arnautovic, Diouf.
Man City possible starting lineup: Caballero, Sagna, Stones, Otamendi, Clichy, Fernandinho, Silva, Sterling, De Bruyne, Nolito, Aguero.