Stoke City v Hull City: Manager Grant McCann confident his team will come good

The Tigers visit the Potteries 22nd in the table, without a win in seven league matches and having managed just one solitary goal during a worrying run of form which has yieled only two points.

And although he conceded that some members of his young squad have suffered a dip in confidence, the Northern Irishman is sure that his team will come good.

“In terms of the confidence levels, they’re a young group. They need an arm around the shoulder, they don’t need beating or anything like that,” McCann said.

“Sometimes, yes, as a young player, your confidence can get knocked if your performance level is low or you lose , but that’s where we have to pick them up, myself, my staff. Tom Huddlestone, Richie Smallwood, Josh Magennis - these type of characters will pick the younger ones up. We believe in every single one of them. We were having a chat on Monday morning and I actually said to them ‘myself and the recruitment team have brought every single player into this football club’. In the space of two-and-a-half years, we’ve created our own group that we have brought in as well as bringing some of the younger ones through, so we believe in every single one of them.

“We feel as if performance levels have been at an okay standard, I think some of the games we’ve been really good, but we’ve lost four out of five games on set-plays, so it’s an area we have to an improve on.”

Improving their defending at the aforementioned set-piece situations has been City’s priority in training this week.

McCann added: “That’s what we’ve done, we’ve tried to re-evaluate, to look at it, see where we are and see what we can improve on.”