Peter Thorne is expected to be in the Stoke City team when they visit the County Ground this afternoon (Sat 25th Nov)

The 27-year-old needs no introduction to Swindon Town fans as he was a firm favourite with the County Ground faithful and formed a brief but lethal striking partnership with Jan Aage Fortoft.

Thorne spent two and a half seasons at Swindon after being signed by Steve McMahon from Blackburn Rovers for £200,00 in January 1995.

He was a prominent member of the 1995/96 side that won the Division Two title and scored 27 goals from 77 league appearances for Swindon.

However, Thorne refused a new contract offered by McMahon and chairman Rikki Hunt in the summer of 1997 .

He decided to move to new pastures and joined ex-Town assistant manager and player Chic Bates at Stoke City.

Swindon wanted £1m for Thorne while Bates only offered £200,000.

A football transfer tribunal decided on a fee of £550,000 which upset both McMahon and Hunt.

Since his move to the Potteries for the 1997/98 campaign, Thorne has been Stoke's most successful goalscorer.

Last season, his third with the Midlands club, he netted 30 times and was the Second Division's leading marksman.

He went through a purple patch scoring 20 goals in the final 17 games as Stoke surged into the play-offs and lifted the Auto Windscreens Shield at Wembley.

However, Thorne suffered a knee injury in the last game of the 1999/2000 season.

It was later diagnosed as a cartilage problem and he had to have surgery.

As a result Thorne missed the first six weeks of the current campaign, but has still managed to find the back of net six times so far and is Stoke's joint top scorer.

It is only three years since he left, but of his former County Ground colleagues, only Mark Robinson remains with Town,

Stoke have been going through a bad patch of late, losing 1-0 at Nuneaton in their FA Cup replay after drawing 0-0 at home.

Prior to that, they lost 1-0 at Oldham, so they have failed to find the target in their last three games.

They are beset by problems off the field. James O'Connor, their promising Irish midfielder, has been the subject of a £750,000 bid from West Brom, which was rejected by manager Gudjon Thordarson.

However, O'Connor, last season's player of the year, has since criticised his Thordarson in public and was left out of Saturday's game.

Stoke are not the same side without him, as he forms a solid partnership in the centre of the field with fellow Irishman Graham Kavanagh, a full international.

Both scored when the team last troubled the scorers, in a 2-2 draw at Northampton Town, when new Town signing Richard Dryden featured for the Cobblers.

The visitors have a couple of familiar faces in defence, with ex-Leeds championship winner Tony Dorigo likely to play at left wing-back and Liverpool's Frode Kippe on loan in the back three.

Iceland international Rikki Dadason is an injury doubt.