Stoke City chairman Peter Coates is delighted with the form of January signing James Beattie.

He told The Sentinel: "James has obviously been a great signing up to now and his goals could keep us up.

"He's such a great finisher. I know he should have scored the goal he did score against Bolton, but you've still got to do it once you are in that situation. But there was never much doubt he would.

"What I particularly like about him is that he scores all kinds of goals - and we've seen that already for ourselves with the five he's scored for Stoke.

"He's not like a Michael Owen, who sits on the shoulder of the last defender and tends to score a certain type of goal."