Scott Parker on Burnley's friendly at Stoke City and Tottenham opener
Burnley will look to take another step forward in their pre-season preparations when they take on Stoke City this weekend.
Scott Parker’s men make the trip down the M6 to the bet365 Stadium for their penultimate friendly of the summer this Saturday.
The Clarets were actually due to play two games on the same day, just as they did last weekend when they took on Huddersfield Town and Shrewsbury Town.
But the behind-closed-doors outing against Sheffield Wednesday, arranged for the club’s Gawthorpe training base, has now been cancelled. It remains to be seen if the Clarets will find a replacement.
As for the public outing at Stoke, the Clarets’ strongest squad is likely to be on show.
Parker, speaking before the Owls game was cancelled, told the Burnley Express: “We’ve got three games left (Stoke, Sheffield Wednesday and Lazio). Two games this week and then obviously our final pre-season game before the season starts.
“It will be another hard week for us and then we’ll start tapering off and keep improving.”
With only two weeks until the season starts, it will be interesting to see which players feature in Staffordshire this weekend.
It comes after the likes of Jordan Beyer, Bashir Humphreys, Connor Roberts, Manuel Benson and Zian Flemming had no involvement in last weekend’s double-header.
Closing in on the tough season opener at Tottenham on August 16, Parker can’t wait for the real action to get underway.
“We're really excited,” he added. “We worked tirelessly last year to be in this position and to go into the Premier League to play against the teams that we're going to be playing this year, so we’re excited.
“We've still got some time, of course we have, but we're looking forward to the start of the season.”