Premier League: Stoke City- Liverpool
Stoke City hope to have a fully fit squad for today and that means a return for Xherdan Shaqiri. I spoke in early season about the importance of several key players to the Potters , especially the Swiss winger.............
The aforementioned Xherdan Shaqiri is set to miss out along with centre back Geoff Cameron and Marko Arnautovic is suspended. The little and large wingers are big losses, without the diminutive Shaqiri, City are 0-0-4 this season, 3-3-0 when he plays, Arnautovic has only missed 18 minutes, but City lost 4/5 in his absence last season, with both road losses coming by three goals. Cameron has missed 10 starts in the last 12 months, through which City have conceded at the rate of 1.9 goals per game. Hard to think of three bigger losses, should all three miss out, as seems highly likely.
Updating those stats, they are 6-5-3 when Shaqiri plays, 3-4-10 in his absence, which is an almost 0.9 points per game difference.
This is compounded as the visitors are without Sadio Mane, Adam Lallana and Jordan Henderson and playmaker Philippe Coutinho is a doubt and subject to a late test.
At the end of January I wrote .............Sadio Mane is an option for Liverpool tonight if Klopp feels he is fit enough after only just returning from the ACN, surely he will at least make the bench and the temptation to throw him in from the start, will be HUGE. When Mane plays Liverpool are 15-5-1 this season, the only loss was away to Bournemouth and Pool led 3-1 there when he left the pitch with 21 minutes remaining !
Their record without the other two guaranteed absentees is also poor , for example they have one win in nine away starts without Henderson, the trio have 21 goals and 17 assists betweem them this season (some overlap of course) but that is a big scoring contribution loss , add Coutinho to the mix and it becomes huge and rises to 29 goals-23 assists !
1.5 units Stoke City +0.25 ball 2.26 asian line/Sportmarket.
Good Luck.
