Stoke Fan View: Mark Hughes has decisions to make ahead of Everton opener

What formation will Hughes go with?

In this preseason, Mark Hughes has used many different formations and experimented well with different players. After the success against Leipzig last weekend however I do think he’ll opt for the 3-4-2-1 formation again.

This formation seems to be the perfect balance as it offers us a lot more defensive security with Shawcross sweeping up behind the two other centre backs and also seems to give us more options in the final third.

This formation is incredibly important for our star man as well Xherdan Shaqiri, as shown against Leipzig. What we saw is that Xherdan was able to roam into the space and if his pre season form is anything to go by, this could definitely be his best season yet. The Swiss international seems to have all his confidence back, that can only be a good thing as he takes over Marko Arnautovic as our star man.

Will Hughes persist with Berahino despite his poor run of form?

Saido really struggled when joining us for the second half of the season failing to find the net despite a lot of game time, which of course seeded doubt into the minds of us Stoke fans as we were left wondering was this £15 million investment a good thing?

In fairness to him in pre season he’s looked a lot sharper and has shown signs that he could turn out to be a useful acquisition after all, scoring against Monaco and coming close numerous times against Bolton and Leipzig.

However Hughes should have a dilemma when it comes to selection as the returning Joselu could make it interesting. Joselu has played just twice for us in pre season scoring four goals, showing those technical qualities Hughes promised when he originally joined the club. Whoever we start needs to do a lot of work of the ball however, making sure the backline of Everton is not able to easily play it out.

Should Hughes finally drop Erik Pieters?

The Dutch fullback showed towards the end of last year that he was way off the levels of previous years as a Stoke player. His lack of attacking threat and poor defensive positional threat have left us extremely weak on the left hand side of the pitch.

I think if we are to adopt the three at the back formation, Egyptian starlet Ramadan Sobhi should be our left wing back.

Sobhi offers us a threat going down the left hand side, something that Erik Pieters has never done when filling in that position. Sobhi also always demonstrates the desire and hard working ethic to defend for the team, meaning he offers a lot at both sides of the pitch. Something very important when playing with wing backs.