The Sky Bet Championship weekend concludes on Sunday lunchtime when two teams who have recently changed their manager meet at the Bet365 Stadium where Stoke City and Watford return from the international break.
These two teams begin the afternoon in the bottom half of the table, which certainly isn’t where their season expectations lie but so tight is the Championship table, whoever wins here will move into the top half and beyond.
Where to watch
The match will be shown live and in full on the Sky Sports Main Event and Sky Sports Football channels with the build-up commencing at 11.30am and kick off coming at 12pm.
Stoke City
Stoke made their managerial change very early in the season and there were signs going into the international break that it was a good decision. Alex Neil has replaced Michael O’Neill and now that he has had a further couple of weeks to work with his players you would imagine we’ll see a team much more reminiscent of those he has managed in the past. We can expect to see a high energy team with a bit of physicality to them.
Stoke went into the international break with a win and a draw behind them. I’m not overly sure a win at Hull is a great form guide but there is no shame in a draw at QPR. This will be the first real home match of the Neil tenure and this is the one we can start judging his side on but two clean sheets prior to the international break suggests the Potters are immediately harder to beat. They now need to offer sufficient output at the other end regularly.
Watford
The new philosophy of giving a manager time and complete change of approach lasted all of 10 matches. The positive for the latest change in boss is that it happens so regularly the players must be used to it by now. In Slaven Bilic they have a man who has achieved at a high level as a player and a manager and he is more likely to command respect from those players within the camp who think they might be above a manager from the lower leagues.
Watford went into the international break with just one win in seven matches to their name and that win was only against a Middlesbrough side who haven’t really got going this season yet so a manager change was even less likely to be too far away. A lot is spoken about the Watford front end and what damage they can do but not so much is pointed out about a defence and midfield which even at this level looks on the light side.
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Team News
Alex Neil has confessed that there are fitness doubts over the likes of Josh Tymon, Jacob Brown and Harry Clarke. The availability of Joe Bursik is also unknown after he has missed training due to a family bereavement.
Slaven Bilic is not expecting to have Joao Pedro available for his first match in charge. The Croatian is also likely to be without Tom Cleverley, Jeremy Ngakia and Rey Manaj. The extra couple of days should see Ismaila Sarr available.
Betting
I would imagine that in the short term Bilic will appreciate that going forward will be the best form of defence and so I expect a fairly open contest here. The one thing any new manager of Watford must surely have worked out by now is that to go deeper than three months into the job you have to hit the ground running and Bilic isn’t stupid so I would expect him to be more attacking in approach than maybe a new manager normally might.
I’m expecting to see a much better attacking performance from Stoke too now that Alex Neil has had time to get his influence over on his squad and had the better part of two weeks to work with most of them during the international break. This is a match both teams will be looking to win to start a busy week in style so we should be in for a game where chances come along regularly. Given the quality in the attacking units of both teams, both teams to score looks the way forward to me.
Tips
Back Both teams to score for a 3/10 stake at 1.91 with William Hill
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