Football
9y

Stoke boss Mark Hughes hopes to spoil Tim Sherwood's Aston Villa debut

Boss Mark Hughes insists Stoke are out to spoil Tim Sherwood's Aston Villa debut.

The Potters go to Villa Park on Saturday with Sherwood taking charge of the hosts for the first time. He replaced Paul Lambert last weekend, signing a deal until 2018, and has been charged with keeping Villa in the Premier League.

They are third from bottom, with Stoke 10th, and Hughes wants to dampen the positive atmosphere at Villa Park.

"They have a new manager and will have something of a new manager bounce. They will want to impress," said Hughes, who won 4-1 at Villa with Stoke last season. "We have to be aware of that. We don't expect anything else and we have to be ready.

"They have a new manager in place and he comes across as a very positive guy.

"We've been doing OK, we've had a couple of poor results but prior to that we had a good run.

"I wouldn't think anyone will take us lightly as we've proved for long periods we can cause people problems.

"You still look at Villa's squad and think they should be doing better. I don't know why they've struggled so much. It will be a challenge for us but we look forward to it.

"We can match our finish last season. We're as near as we can be to being on track, we have some opportunities to better last year's total."

Ryan Shawcross remains sidelined with a back problem but Jonathan Walters, Erik Pieters, Marc Wilson and Stephen Ireland have all trained this week.

Geoff Cameron is banned after his red card in the 4-1 FA Cup defeat at Blackburn last weekend but Hughes has been boosted by the return of some key men.

He added: "We still have a few injuries. Ryan Shawcross is not available but we may get Marc Wilson back. We will hope to get a couple back -- maybe Ireland and Walters.

"Pieters has trained for the most part of the week so we will get some back. That's where we are at the moment. We've had injuries over time. There's no rhyme or reason to it."

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