Stoke clash with Nottingham Forest crucial to Nathan Jones' future

Watch Stoke vs Nottingham Forest on Friday, live on Sky Sports Football from 7pm; kick-off 8pm

Wednesday 25 September 2019 15:09, UK

Stoke City's game against Nottingham Forest on Friday night is key to Nathan Jones' future - although the club has no plans to sack their manager before the weekend.

Sky Sports News has been told it is Jones himself who feels a bad result at home to Forest - live on Sky Sports Football - would be difficult for him to survive.

Jones made 10 changes to Stoke's starting line-up on Tuesday night, and saw his team knocked out of the Carabao Cup at the hands of League Two Crawley Town.

Stoke sit second bottom of the Championship and have yet to record a league win this season.

Jones left Luton for Stoke in January, but since then he has won just four of 32 games at his new club.

The patience of the Stoke board is believed to be wearing thin, but they are trying to avoid changing manager again - Jones is Stoke's third manager since Mark Hughes left 20 months ago.

After Tuesday night's defeat, he questioned the desire and commitment of his players.

"That's as bad a performance as I've had since I've been a manager and I include all my time at Luton Town and all my time since I've been here," he told the club's website.

"I know one or two haven't played as much recently but we were nowhere near in terms of desire, work rate and our reading of the game was very poor."

He added: "I don't think we really controlled any part of the game and we didn't get anywhere near them.

"Physically we didn't compete with them which was very disappointing. We have good athletes in our team to have done something in terms of that but I just thought we were poor all over."