FORMER CITY DUO SET TO GO HEAD TO HEAD AT WEMBLEY

DANNY Batth will be marking Sam Vokes as the two former Stoke City team-mates go head to head in the League One play-off final. Batth’s Sunderland beat Lee Gregory and Saido Berahino’s Sheffield Wednesday in dramatic fashion in Tuesday’s semi-final second leg at Hillsborough. The tie was level on aggregate at 1-1 until Patrick Roberts scored in the 93rd minute and booked a trip to Wembley Stadium. Vokes had already secured his passage by helping Wycombe overcome MK Dons, who had finished third in the table behind Rotherham and James Mcclean and Jordan Cousins’ Wigan. The final will be played on Saturday, May 21.

Jack Clarke, who spent the second half of last season on loan at Stoke from Spurs, set up the pivotal Roberts goal after collecting a sweeping ball from Batth down the left. His manager Alex Neil said: “It’s what happens with players, particularly young ones, they dip and they come back, they dip and come back “Jack has got good quality. He can take the ball, he can dribble, he can go past people, and those kind of players are really useful to have in the team, and he delivered the moment we needed and Pat [Roberts] got on the end of it.

“The hardest thing always is to get really creative players to work extremely hard, but our lads have got an appetite and an understanding of the greater good. The rest of their team-mates demand it, I demand it, and they demand it of themselves. You don’t win anything without hard work and graft - that’s a prerequisite - and then, as for the rest of it, if you’ve got quality, that’s a bonus. We’ve got that quality, and we also put in the hard work.” Batth, aged 31, moved to the North East in January with a task of helping get promotion over the line and has now made 11 appearances, scoring once.

Vokes, aged 32, has scored 17 in 48 appearances for Wycombe since joining last summer.

Manager Gareth Ainsworth said: “When you have a player like Sam Vokes [in your team] who makes the ball stick and flicks things on up front, you have got to use him for his strengths.

“We signed him from Stoke, he has scored at a European Championships and he has humility, and to have him here, at Wycombe Wanderers, is just ridiculous. He has taken over the mantel from the bigger man in Akinfenwa.”