After a frantic few days in the transfer market, Lee Bowyer can concentrate on preparing his team again.

Predicting Bowyer’s starting line-up is difficult and much will depend on which new players the manager feels are ready to slot in straight away.

This is wha‎t Bowyer had to say about his new arrivals:

“I’m delighted obviously with all the signings, I think they’re all good. I’ve got some youth, I’ve got some experience and we’ve got a lot of Premier League experience. Regarding Josh (Cullen), obviously we know him inside out. We thought that it wasn’t a possibility”.

“We got told all the way along that Josh wouldn’t be leaving West Ham. So, for him to become available towards the end was a big surprise, and a welcome surprise. I was delighted to get him back because I know what he brings to us from last season”.

“With Beram (Kayal), I can’t believe that he came. Brighton helped us out so much in getting him through the door. So I’m grateful to them obviously, but to have someone with his experience and knowledge of the game, he’s a very, very good player. So he, like Sam Field, is going to bring Premier League experience”.

“All the lads we have signed are winners. Jonathan Leko, he’s our wildcard. He’s the one who I think is going to bring something different, something that we haven’t got here. He’s very good. I think the fans are going to take to him, in a different way to Josh Cullen and Beram and Sam Field, because they’re just midfielders and they do the stuff that people don’t really recognise and obviously they like wingers and strikers that bring something different‎,” added Bowyer.

With the plethora of midfielders now available to him, Bowyer may revert to playing four at the back.

He managed to keep star striker, Lyle Taylor, despite intense pressure from Brentford. 

Tomer Hemed’s registration is still awaiting clearance, so, as long as the speculation has not affected him mentally, Taylor will be the main man up front.

Speaking on the Taylor situation, Bowyer was typically honest and to the point:

‎”Lyle stayed. That’s massive to us, (Roland Duchatelet) could have easily taken that money. I don’t know how many bids they made in the end… six, seven, but they made a very good offer for Lyle. Keep in mind that we paid nothing for him”.

“The last one they made, I thought was the one that we were going to lose him but the owner said no. It was my job to tell him (the owner) that if we’d lost Lyle Taylor, we would have been in big trouble. That’s obvious to see”.

“I told Lyle that he’s a massive player for us and with the money that we’d have been paid, we couldn’t replace him. It’s impossible, even if we’d have gotten the money that we turned down we still couldn’t have replaced Lyle”.

Though back in training, the game may have come a little too soon for Chuks Aneke to be involved.  

Consequently the Addicks line up vs Stoke could possibly look something like this:

Phillips; Solly, Lockyer, Pearce,Purrington; Cullen,‎ Bayal, Forster-Caskey, Field, Williams; Taylor.

Subs: Amos, Oshilaja, Sarr, Pratley, Gallagher, Leko, Bonne.