Stoke City v West Bromwich Albion Betting Tips

This match is the closest the Premier League gets to a West Midlands derby these days and sees two established top flight sides go head-to-head. However, while West Bromwich Albion are on an upward curve, Stoke City are propping up the rest of the division.

Saturday’s match will be West Brom manager Tony Pulis’ 1000th game as a manager. A phenomenal achievement.

The start of this season has been déjà-vu for Stoke City fans as they see their team make a poor start to the campaign – just like last year where it took six matches to pick up a win.

Having suffered such a poor start to the season, you may have expected Stoke City to sacrifice the EFL League Cup in order to concentrate on Premier League survival. Instead they fielded a strong line-up for the midweek cup clash at home to Hull City just to try and confirm a win against a the weakened team fielded by the Yorkshire club. Unfortunately for Mark Hughes’ men they succumbed to a last-minute 2-1 loss at the Bet365 Stadium despite scoring first through Austrian international Marco Arnautovic.

This pretty much summed up Stoke’s season so far. They look good going forward with a strike force that boasts an array of talent such as the aforementioned Arnautovic along with Bojan, Xherdan Shaqiri and the expensive loan signing Wilfried Bony, but, it is at the back where the majority of their problems lie. This is unlike Stoke of recent years who have become the hallmark of how to defend properly and get results.

Coincidentally it was their opposite number on Saturday, West Brom manager Tony Pulis, who started this tradition of Stoke being hard to beat.

The pressure is certainly mounting on Mark Hughes, perhaps more from outside the club than within the hierarchy itself – locally based Chairman Peter Coates has always been very patient with his managers and has only had Hughes and Pulis in the managerial hot seat since re-buying the club back from its former Icelandic owners back in 2006. Although Coates has said the poor start to Stoke’s season has been purely down to bad luck, it will be interesting to see how far the chairman’s usual patience will go if the Potters’ form does not pick up soon.

An interesting poker in the fire surrounding Mark Hughes has been the release of controversial midfielder Joey Barton’s autobiography. In his book, the suspended Rangers midfielder who played under Hughes at Queen’s Park Rangers, Barton describes Hughes as a ‘terrible manager’ who has ‘really poor’ people skills. Are we now seeing evidence of this at Stoke City?

Whilst you would expect nothing less from Barton, it has drawn a witty response from Hughes’s number two Mark Bowen who has said:

“Joey Barton has got a book to sell, hasn’t he? He probably needs to bring up things about people because he may struggle to sell it on his football accomplishments, I suppose.”

After picking up just one point in three matches since opening day, West Brom’s fortunes have suddenly turned around. They went 4-0 up against lowly West Ham United last weekend and eventually won 4-2 – fantastic for a team that is said to be boring. New signing Nacer Chadli from Tottenham had a hand to play in all four of Albion’s goals on his home debut – either by scoring them himself (2) or assisting them. At £13m he is the club’s record transfer but, if he carries on turning in performances like that, then he will be worth every penny. Additionally, the Belgian international has now created the perfect foil for Venezuelan striker Salomon Rondon.

After such an expansive match against the Hammers it will be interesting to see how Pulis sets up his side going to Stoke. It is the perfect scenario for the Welshman to go away against a side under pressure as it means he can sit back and hit teams on the break – I imagine that is what will happen on Saturday.

Although the Potters have a good record against the Baggies, which is mostly down to Tony Pulis, I think they will struggle again this weekend. Albion look full of confidence and in Rondon and Chadli they have two excellent players who can take advantage of Stoke’s awful defence. I would certainly back Rondon to find the net once again on Saturday afternoon. The former Zenit St. Petersburg striker is a bully physically and, with Chadli providing excellent service, the in-form 27-year-old should get plenty of opportunities.

The bookies have made Stoke the favourites here but I would look at backing Albion in one way or another here. As I think West Brom would be quite happy with a draw, I would advise going for ‘West Brom Draw no Bet’.

With both of these sides having in-form front-lines and Stoke’s defence looking rocky, I think we will see a few goals here and thus ‘Over 2.5 Goals’ at 13/10.

See more tips here.