Hull City were handed a 3-1 defeat away at bottom club, Barnsley, last weekend in the Championship, so The Tigers will be looking forward to returning to their KCOM Stadium on Saturday where they’ll entertain strugglers, Stoke City, as the hosts look to stay in touch with the play-off pack.
Mixed results in recent weeks have seen Hull City remain in a mid-table position of 12th place in the second tier as they’ve posted impressive wins against 3rd placed Fulham 3-0 away from home and a 4-0 home win against 6th placed Preston North End.
However, they have also succumbed to defeats against West Brom and Barnsley.
At their KCOM Stadium, Hull have posted mixed results there too as wins and losses have alternated over the past few matches on home turf with wins against Sheffield Wednesday, Derby County and Preston, but in-between times, have lost to QPR and West Brom.
Hull will be boosted by the fact though that they registered a 2-0 home win over The Potters in their last encounter at the KCOM Stadium back in February of this year.
Onto Stoke City and The Potters still occupy a place in the relegation zone despite recent back-to-back wins against Barnsley and Wigan Athletic, but new manager, Michael O’Neill has been unable to prevent his slipping back into their old familiar ways as they’ve suffered recent back-to-back defeats to Cardiff City and Blackburn Rovers in their last two matches.
Although Stoke are just three points adrift of Luton Town and Middlesbrough (and safety), 3 defeats out of their last 4 matches on the road suggest this could be another tough trip for The Potters to negotiate following recent defeats at Sheffield Wednesday, Millwall and Cardiff City.
With just 3 away wins out of their last 24 matches on their travels as well, Stoke’s chances of grabbing all three points at Hull City on Saturday do seem remote, and it seems that the best that O’Neill’s side can hope for in Saturday’s visit to Humberside is a draw - which of course is a result that Stoke City are very familiar with!
An important factor which might be key to this fixture though is that Stoke have failed to score in 13 of these last 24 away matches, so Hull could edge the points here.