Stoke City launch their programme of pre-season friendlies with a trip to Chester.
Stoke City’s three new signings are expected to have their first run outs for the club in tonight’s opening pre-season friendly at Chester (7.45pm).
Viktor Johansson, Ben Gibson and Eric Bocat met their new teammates properly when training started back at Clayton Wood last week. They are likely to get about 45 minutes each at Chester as Steven Schumacher’s work steps up another gear. It will be a senior travelling party only likely to be minus Ben Pearson, who is going to be a long-term lay-off following hamstring surgery, and Ryan Mmaee, who hopes to be back soon following a knee injury.
This is the first of six friendlies that will get Stoke into shape ahead of the first Championship game of the season, at home against Coventry on August 10. The first team and under-21s squads will fly to Ireland for a week-long training camp in Cork on Saturday too. But the players involved this evening will highlight a sharp contrast between where the club is at now in terms of its preparations compared to this time last year, when a huge summer rebuild was only just starting.
In Stoke’s first pre-season friendly of 2023, at Notts County, only four of the 25-man party would start more than one league game. Josh Laurent was the only one of those to start 30 while Ben Wilmot, Jack Bonham and Tyrese Campbell stayed around the first team. Josh Tymon and Jacob Brown would leave very early in the campaign while Connor Taylor and Lewis Macari were on their way out as well.
This time around, the base of the group is already in the building – even if there are sure to be comings and goings in the month-and-a-half leading to deadline day.
Johansson has signed as number one, Gibson and Bocat are joined by Wilmot, Michael Rose, Enda Stevens, Junior Tchamadeu and Lynden Gooch in defence. Laurent has Sidibe, Wouter Burger, Jordan Thompson, Lewis Baker and Daniel Johnson for company in midfield.
It’s a first pre-season in England for Million Manhoef, Mehdi Leris and Bae Junho and Andre Vidigal only joined in late July last year. Emre Tezgel and Nathan Lowe will have a chance to try to catch Schumacher’s eye, with loan suitors waiting in the wings, and Niall Ennis has an opportunity to stake his claim too. There are clubs believed to be checking his status as Stoke remain in the market for a striker. Young centre-back Christy Grogan (illness) and left-back Josh Bickerton (ankle) will miss out.