The Andre Vidigal job that Steven Schumacher has got at Stoke City: View | OneFootball

Stoke City will hope the arrival of Steven Schumacher is the kickstart they need for their campaign.

Heading into this season, there were different expectations placed on the shoulders of the Stoke players, as the club had a very different summer.

Alex Neil’s first season in charge didn’t go as well as expected, so the club decided to back the manager and allow him to make numerous changes to the playing squad.

A lot of players were signed either as free agents, on loan deals, or bought from elsewhere. While the club got off to an okay start, results soon started to turn, with the Potters spending most of this campaign in the bottom half.

The defeat to Sheffield Wednesday earlier this month was the final straw, as Stoke decided to sack Neil after 16 months in charge.

Stoke City appoint Steven Schumacher as manager

There were a few names linked to the hotseat, as while they may be sitting at the bottom end of the table, it will still be considered an attractive job for many.

It came to light that Plymouth Argyle’s Schumacher was someone the club admired and were keen to make him their new manager.

Then on Tuesday evening, Stoke confirmed they had got their man, with the 39-year-old signing a three-and-a-half-year deal at the Bet365 Stadium.

Schumacher hasn’t been in the management game for a long time, as his first role was at Plymouth, and he helped guide the club not only to promotion but to a title-winning campaign.

Schumacher comes into a side that is struggling for wins and is indeed in a fight for safety, so pressure will be on him straight away to turn results around.

This gives every Stoke player a fresh chance at the club, but it could be said that if the Potters are to climb the table and Schumacher is going to be successful, he needs to get the best out of Andre Vidigal.

As mentioned, all of the current Stoke players will see this change in manager as a chance for them to start again at the football club.

But some of these players will know that they didn’t perform well for Neil, while for others it was a case of losing their form and then struggling to get it back under the previous regime.

One player who you could say fits into the latter category is Vidigal, as he was someone who started the season in electric form.

The winger scored three goals in the opening four Championship games, with a double coming in the opening-day win over Rotherham United. But since grabbing his last goal in the defeat to Hull City in September, Vidigal has struggled to perform on a consistent basis for the Potters.

So far this season, Vidigal has an average SofaScore.com rating of 6.76, with his last four games seeing him get a match rating of 6.7, 6.5, 6.5, and 6.6. That is a big difference from the 8.3, 7.2, and 7.4’s he was getting in the first few games of the season.

The 25-year-old has started 10 of the 14 league games he has played so far, averaging 64 minutes per game. Vidigal has an expected goal rate of 3.52 and a scoring frequency of 223 minutes, with him averaging 2.2 shots per game, 0.8 on target, and a goal per game rate of 0.3, as per SofaScore.com.

Furthermore, the attacker has a goal conversion rate of 13%, with him missing four big chances and only creating one big chance, with an expected assist rate of 0.93 in a Stoke shirt, as per SofaScore.com.

Vidigal did hit the ground running but has now lost his way at the Bet365 Stadium and is in need of some love and trust from his manager.

It is obviously very early to say whether Schumacher will have the player in his team, but given what he has shown in glimpses, the 39-year-old will want to try and get more out of the player, and if he does, he could see a change in results pretty quickly.