TONY PULIS made two changes to the side beaten in Stoke City's last Barclays Premier League outing for the visit of Portsmouth . . . one of them enforced by the suspension served by Abdoulaye Faye and the other seeing Glenn Whelan drop down to the bench.
Faye's place at the centre of the Potters defence went to Robert Huth, with Andy Wilkinson coming in at right back to allow for that switch, while Whelan was replaced in the centre of the park by fit-again Salif Diao.
Whelan passed a late fitness test on his groin injury but he and Republic of Ireland colleage Liam Lawrence were named as substitutes following the disappointment of their failure to reach the World Cup Finals.
With David Kitson now out on loan at Middlesbrough, his place on the bench went to Mama Sidibe while midfielder Danny Pugh was back among the substitutes again at the expense of central defender Leon Cort.
Portsmouth were boosted by the return of the experienced Hermann Hreidarsson following his recovery from a foot injury, while Paul Hart included veteran striker Kanu in place of Frederic Piquionne, who had scored two goals in Pompey's Carling Cup triumph over the Potters at Fratton Park last month.
But they suffered a major setback just before the kick-off when England goalkeeper David James aggravated a knee injury in the warm-up and had to be replaced by Jamie Ashdown, with Antti Niemi named on the bench.
CITY (4-4-2): Sorensen; Wilkinson, Huth, Shawcross, Collins; Delap, Diao, Whitehead, Etherington, Beattie, Fuller. Subs: Simonsen, Higginbotham, Pugh, Whelan, Lawrence, Sidibe, Tuncay.
PORTSMOUTH (4-4-2): Ashdown; Ben Haim, Kaboul, Wilson, Hreidarsson; Brown, Mullins, O'Hara, Prince-Boateng, Dindane, Kanu. Subs: Niemi, Piquionne, Van den Borre, Williamson, Webber, Smith, Hughes.
REFEREE: K. Friend
