Source: SKY_Sports
Lawrence offers Whitehead advice
Liam Lawrence has called on former Sunderland team-mate Dean Whitehead to join him at Stoke City.
The midfielder appears to be out of favour at the Stadium of Light and has been linked with a summer move away from Wearside.
Championship outfit Ipswich, where former Black Cats boss Roy Keane is in charge, were believed to be leading the hunt, but Stoke are optimistic they can lure the 27-year-old to the Britannia Stadium.
Lawrence has been doing all he can to ensure that proves to be
the case, admitting he has spoken with Whitehead about the prospect of joining the Potters.
"I said a few things which I had better not go into. I just said you want to be in the best league and this is a club going forward here at Stoke," Lawrence told The Sentinel.
"I spoke to him the other day and I speak to him quite regularly. Obviously the gaffer (Tony Pulis) fancies him and he asked me about him. I gave it my full backing.
"Maybe it's time he moved on from Sunderland for a new challenge. It would be great if they thrash things out and he comes here."
Whitehead has spent the last five years at Sunderland, three of them alongside Lawrence, and his ex-midfield cohort claims the time is right for him to try his luck somewhere else.
"He was one of the best midfielders I'd played with when he first went to Sunderland and now, with years of experience in the Premier League behind him, he will be ready for the challenge of Stoke," added Lawrence.
"The players that have come here from Sunderland (Lawrence, Thomas Sorensen, Danny Higginbotham and Rory Delap) needed to move on and, to be fair, the manager gets the best out of us."
