Stoke City vs Fulham - Premier League

Stoke City vs Fulham
English Premier League, Round 8
Date : 15.October 2011 - 16:00 CET
Stadium : Brittania Stadium - Stoke-on-Trent

On Saturday, 15th October at 16:00 (CET), Stoke City will host Fulham FC in Round 8 of the English Premier League. The visitors enjoyed their first victory of the season last time out but will face an uphill battle in finding another on Saturday.

After seeing some fresh faces come in, the Potters find themselves in 8th place of the Premier League after the first seven matches. Last time at the Brittania, Stoke City surprised pundits by holding a seemingly unstoppable Manchester United to a 1-1 draw. Their other two home matches this season were equally impressive, resulting in a draw with Chelsea (1-1) and win over Liverpool (1-0). Tony Pulis will find these stats comforting and press his players to claim maximum points from a team who did the double on them last season.

Fulham have had a deceptively slow start to their Premier League campaign and recorded their first win with a 6-0 thrashing of Queens Park Rangers two weeks ago. Despite this being their first three points, Mark Schwarzer has recorded four clean sheets and allowed just 6 goals this season. The problems have been in the attack, where Fulham have struggled to put the ball on target. Martin Jol will need to correct this on Saturday if his team are to have any chance in Stoke.

Head to Head :
Last Meeting : 22.01.2011, Fulham 2 - 0 Stoke City
Wins Stoke City : 7
Wins Fulham : 12
Draws : 7

Possible Line-Ups :
Stoke City : Begovic - Woodgate, Huth, Etherington, Shawcross, Delap, Whitehead, Walters, Wilson, Crouch, Jones.
Fulham : Schwarzer - Grygera, Riise, Hangeland, Baird, Dempsey, Sidwell, Murphy, Dembele, Zamora, Johnson.

Betting Tip/Prediction :
These teams will be difficult to pick apart. Fulham have seemingly taken care of their woeful lack of goals with Andy Johnson in particular scoring 5 goals in the last two matches (in all competitions). Stoke City have had impeccable results at Brittania against the top clubs in the Premiership and have not lost there since May. We believe this will be a hard-fought one with no winner ultimately being decided.
Our prediction for this game is a draw