A stuttering Aston Villa side welcome Stoke City when the Premier League resumes on the weekend when Tim Sherwood’s Villains would finally look to put an end to their torrid run of results since the narrow opening day win against Bournemouth.
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This is a really big game for Aston Villa – they haven’t won since the first game of the season.
Traore (ankle) is unsure if he will play on Saturday against Stoke.
And the Welshman said: “Now we want to build upon that and sign off for the global break unbeaten in four (Stoke drew with Leicester in the league prior to the Fulham game)”.
“If he was called up for the squad then he’d be going but he wasn’t”. That’s what he’s trying to install in his players and that’s not wrong. Elsewhere, the BT Sport pundit Paul Scholes, a man who enjoyed a successful 19-year playing career with Manchester United without uttering a single word, has been further unburdening himself by pointing out that the reason a few English clubs are struggling in Europe is because all the best footballers, with the notable exception of Sergio Agüero, play for Barcelona, Real Madrid, PSG and Juventus.
“Roy is at a lot of our games and he is always looking. We’re a young group, a new group and I’m confident we’ll be okay”, he added.
The star man Xherdan Shaqiri will be undergoing a late fitness test ahead of the game on Saturday Philipp Wollscheid has impressed lately and he could retain his place at the back at the expense of a recovering Marc Wilson.
Last season, this game was officially Sherwood’s first in charge and again Villa took the lead – through Scott Sinclair – only for Stoke to fire back and eventually win 2-1 thanks to Ron Vlaar’s calamitous error paved the way for the same player to concede an injury time penalty.
Hughes said: “Ryan probably could have joined in with us, but with our minds focused on preparing for the game at the weekend we felt he would be best served working with the academy”.
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Tore was part of the Chelsea FA Youth Cup winning side in 2010 and has now started his third season in Turkey.
