Stoke City: Kansas shooting stars pose goal threat to Potters

SPORTING Kansas City are sending out distinctly mixed messages ahead of the visit of Stoke City (1am tomorrow UK time).

They rattled off a club record 19 shots during the second half of Saturday's home clash with Columbus Crew, the MLS team who beat Stoke in Ohio last week.

But a 2-1 home defeat to Columbus meant it was four home games without a win for Kansas – their last coming on June 16 – a run which has seen them drop from first to joint second behind Thierry Henry's New York Red Bulls in the ML Eastern Conference.

And for the full-time statos out there, Saturday's reverse left Kansas boasting an overall MLS record of 205 wins to 206 defeats.

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At least there was the consolation of a goal on Saturday, their first on home soil for 332 minutes, when leading scorer Kei Kamara bagged his eighth of the season.

Not that Kansas are shy within sight of goal, and City keepers Asmir Begovic and Thomas Sorensen will be interested to know that this evening's hosts have reeled off a total of 356 shots in 22 MLS games this season.

That's the best for all clubs this season, incidentally, as is their grand total of 7,005 shots on goal during their MLS existence.

Such figures will grate with Stoke fans still grumbling about their own side's failure to hit the net more than 36 times in 38 Premier League games last term.

Kamara, a Sierra Leone international, has now scored 28 goals in his Kansas career, the sixth highest in the club's history.

At the other end of the field, Kansas will offer little encouragement to Stoke after conceding just seven goals in 11 games at HQ in their regular league season.

The club's success this term saw Kansas trio Jimmy Nielsen, Aurelien Collin and Graham Zusi play for the MLS all-stars (with the likes of Henry and David Beckham) in their 3-2 win over Chelsea in Philadelphia last week.

Others to look out for tonight include Konrad Warzycha, the Polish-born son of Columbus coach Robert Warzycha, a midfielder with Everton once-upon-a-time, while Kansas striker Teal Bunbury had an unsuccessful trial at Stoke 18 months ago.

It's always difficult to know how many fans a touring team will attract for what the Americans regard as an exhibition match.

But there is no denying the interest in soccer here after a ninth successive sell-out home crowd of 18,938 packed LiveStrong Park for the defeat to Columbus.