Stoke City faces West Bromwich Albion at Brittania Stadium on Saturday, Sept. 24. Here’s all the info you need to watch.
Premier League cellar-dwelling Stoke City looks to break their luck with their first win of the season against West Bromwich Albion. This is a game of conflicting tendencies: Stoke has dominated West Brom for the past 30 years.
But one of the architects of that success, Tony Pulis, now manages West Brom, who he’s led to three wins in three tries against his former team. The Potters entered the season with high hopes of playing dashing football and breaking their usual mid-table gravity.
Instead, they’re winless in their opening five league games and have collapsed on both ends, giving up the most goals in the league (14) while tying for the fewest scored (three).
Stoke faces the additional challenge of trying to end the match with 11 men on the field. In two of their last three meetings with West Brom, a Potter was sent off. Another area of concern: defending set pieces. In Stoke’s 4-1 defeat to Crystal Palace a week ago, two of the goals conceded came from early set pieces. The last thing a team struggling to defend set pieces needs is a visit from a Tony Pulis-led squad.
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While Pulis, who’ll be coaching his 1,000th Premier League game, is widely seen as an ascetic pragmatist, West Brom scored four in last week’s win over West Ham, the most by a Pulis-led team in a league game in five years.
There’s a whiff of the unpredictable around the manager this season: he’s given two starts to 18-year-old midfielder Sam Field, brought in on loan a 20-year-old defender in Brendan Galloway, and signed a creative midfielder, Nacer Chadli, who scored or assisted on all four goals against West Ham.
Chadli cramped up at the end but is available for the Stoke game. The Baggies took advantage of West Ham’s wings not getting back on defense and will hope the Stoke duo of Marko Arnautovic and Shaqiri prove equally susceptible.
Next: Stoke City and West Ham in the unusual position of the relegation zone
The Premier League match between Stoke City and West Bromwich Albion will be available live only on NBC Sports App, which you can access with your cable or satellite provider either online or through the NBC Sports App.
Date: Saturday, September 24
Start time: 10:00 a.m. ET
Location: Stoke-on-Trent, England
Stadium: Brittania Stadium
Live Stream: NBCSports