Ki-Jana Hoever is expected to be available for Stoke City’s midweek match against Huddersfield Town. However, Alex Neil is still set to be without at least three more key players after a difficult injury-plagued start to the season.
When Stoke City headed to Norwich on Saturday, Hoever was an unexpected absence, and Mehdi Leris was asked to step in at right-back, with deadline-day acquisition Junior Tchamadeu making his debut as a substitute in the dying minutes. The 21-year-old, who is on loan from Wolves for the season, was on international duty with the Netherlands under-21s last week and is expected to return soon.
“I didn’t realise he was going to be (out) until (Friday),” Neil admitted after the game at Carrow Road. “He couldn’t train yesterday.” We received a scan. It will not be a long-term solution. We’ll put him on the list for the next game.”
Stoke, on the other hand, will most certainly go to Huddersfield on Wednesday without two starting attackers, Andre Vidigal and Ryan Mmaee, as well as left-back Enda Stevens. Summer signing Vidigal, who has already shown game-changing potential in the Championship, suffered an ankle injury late on at Millwall, while Mmaee, who joined from Hungary champions Ferencvaros to lead the line, suffered a hamstring injury almost immediately after scoring his first goal for the club in a cup win.
Left-back Stevens suffered a calf injury while playing for the Republic of Ireland against France. Another deadline-day acquisition, Lynden Gooch, made his debut at left-back. Sol Sidibe, an emerging midfielder, did not play on Saturday after becoming ill while on international duty with England Under-17s in Spain.
“It doesn’t help that we’re missing both first-choice full-backs, that we’re missing Vidigal, that Mmaee is missing,” Neil remarked in Norwich. We have something to fight with, but there are a lot of clubs in the league dealing with a variety of issues. The one thing that distinguishes us from everyone else is that we are constantly replacing old changes with new ones.
“I mean, whereas other teams have had some kind of continuity with the team and the fact that they’ve been together for maybe six months, 12 months, 18 months, or even a few years in some cases, we’re basically trying to bond a brand new squad together.” When some of the new lads you brought in leave, you replace them with other new lads.
“I think we’ll get some good results,” he predicted to StokeonTrentLive. “Everything will be OK. I’m not concerned about us at all. It’s part of getting consistency with the starting XI, getting consistency with people being available, and making sure we don’t have to change too much too often – and I think once we get to that point, which I’m hoping will be soon, we can keep performing like that and be fine.”
Leave a Reply