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Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Looking at Stoke: Six Successive Clean Sheets...One home loss...4 home goals conceded!

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19th placed QPR with 24 points travel to 7th placed Stoke with 34 points. Stoke, with four prermierhip loans - including Lee Hendrie, who QPR wanted, and Patrik Berger, haven't conceded a goal in their last six games.
Stoke's Home Record: Played 10: Won 6; drawn 3 lost 1. For 16 Against 4
QPR's Away Record Played 10 Won 3 Drawn 3 Lost 4 For 11 Against 14

Football League/Tony Leighton Profiles Stoke Manager, Tony Pulis "THE LOAN ARRANGER RIDES AGAIN!"
Canny loan signings have helped Stoke City climb the Coca-Cola Championship table and manager Tony Pulis, in his second spell with the Potters, aims to continue borrowing players from higher-ranked clubs as he looks to guide his team to the Premiership.
Four of the five current Pulis loanees - Liverpool's Salif Diao, the Aston Villa pair of Lee Hendrie and Patrik Berger plus Portsmouth's Andy Griffin - are from the top flight while the fifth, Liam Lawrence, was in the Premiership with Sunderland last season.
The Pulis loan strategy has been quite deliberate following his summer return to the Britannia Stadium, where he spent almost three seasons in the hot seat before spending the 2005-06 campaign at Plymouth Argyle.
He explains: "When I came back to the club there were a lot of players still here that I'd brought in during my previous time here, and I think there was a little bit of apathy about Stoke City being a middle of the table club.
"We needed to bring in one or two players to show people within the club that we have ambition and Peter (Coates, the club chairman) has allowed me to do that. We've sparked something off and the fans are getting pretty excited by the players we're bringing in.
"The situation with loan players is that you're always just a phone call away from their clubs calling them back and that can be a problem, but the lads here are enjoying it and none of them have come to me and said they'd like to go back to their own clubs.
"I can't control the situation, that's down to their clubs, and we'll have to see what happens when the transfer window opens in January - but hopefully we can keep a few of them and bring a few others in."
Pulis will be hoping that any new loan arrivals can dovetail into his line-up as well as the present batch have managed, proven by Stoke's recent run of five wins and a draw without conceding a single goal.
The sequence of six successive clean sheets is a new club record and Pulis says: "What really pleases me is that we're playing with four out-and-out forward players, so you've got to give great credit to the back four, the goalkeeper and the two central midfielders.
"They've been doing absolutely smashing and long may it continue - if we can get a few more clean sheets and keep getting the right results we can hopefully stay up at the top end of the table."
Stoke Official Site

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