Stoke Fan View: Mark Hughes' men must rediscover form

What are we going to do about our defensive shortcomings?

Going into the Southampton match we’ve only got one confirmed fit centre-back. Not a great return considering the investment, particularly in the backline, over summer.

Kurt Zouma is the only one to be confirmed fit so it begs the question, what does Hughes actually do? Does he stick with the same system playing a three back of Glen Johnson, Kurt Zouma and Erik Pieters or just change it back to a back four and maybe play young Harry Souttar.

Whichever way he goes could be crucial, I wouldn’t mind playing three at the back again but Johnson and Pieters looked incredibly out of their depth in that position. I do think if we play three at the back we should play a natural centre back in Souttar though, as Johnson especially looked very poor at centre back.

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Our midfield needs to be much more competitive.

In our last three games, our midfield pairing of Joe Allen and Darren Fletcher haven’t done enough and it’s shown in our overall performance and with the result, it’s imperative they both go back to the early season form.

Fletcher had a nightmare against Chelsea playing a big part in two of their goals, a very uncharacteristic performance from him since he joined on a free from West Brom. However, his opposite number Joe Allen has been poor for quite a long time now.

Joe Allen needs to find the early season form of last year which made him a fan favourite here at the potteries, something he’s failed to hit for a long time now. His passing and disrupting of play aren’t at the levels required, it will be interesting to see how he plays against his reported replacement Lemina.

Where are the goals coming from?

A problem that is has been a constant since we got promoted to the Premier League. We don’t have a frequent goalscorer in our ranks.

The signing of Saido Berahino has proven so far to be a bit of a bad decision and we’re having to constantly rely on an ageing Peter Crouch to bail us out of difficult situations. Jese is having a rough patch but with constant travelling to Spain and back to see his kid, it has to have a big effect on him mentally and physically.

It’s interesting to see how Hughes approaches this problem, do we go more open and play and an expansive game or carry on defending first and play to our strengths? It’s a question Hughes will have to find the answers for.