26-year-old is surely eyeing a Stoke City escape route in January: View | OneFootball

Andre Vidigal has been cast aside by Steven Schumacher and needs game-time elsewhere

There were a lot of changes made to Steven Schumacher's Stoke City squad throughout the transfer window ahead of this season.

The Potters finished the campaign well in 2023/24 and avoided the drop with a game to spare as Schumacher guided them to an eventual 17th-placed finish, and the aim now is to build upon that going forward into his first full term in charge.

Stoke signed 10 new players in the summer, either on loan or permanently, while six players were allowed to leave for fees or on loan with a big turnover needed to give the former Plymouth Argyle boss a near-ideal squad for his style of play heading into a crucial campaign.

One player that has not departed the Potteries despite an exit seeming likely is Portuguese forward Andre Vidigal, after he had a mixed debut season with Stoke in 2023/24 and looked set to leave with new additions signed in his position over the last few months.

Vidigal is set to remain with the club until at least January now, with overseas windows also closed, but will surely seek an exit when possible, with it looking quite unlikely that he will win his left-wing spot back in the coming months.

Andre Vidigal started well at Stoke but his form dipped

There was understandable fanfare surrounding Vidigal's arrival in the Potteries last July, due to his previous pedigree as a Portuguese youth international and impressive exploits in the Primeira Liga with Maritimo in 2022/23.

He looked to be worth every penny of the reported £450,000 that Stoke spent on bringing him to the club in his first few outings, as he netted a brace on the opening day of the league campaign to help his side to a 4-1 victory over Rotherham United, before going on to find the net three more times in his next five games in all competitions with match-winning strikes against West Brom and Watford.

He continued to play consistent games well into the season, but his notable decrease in attacking output coincided with Stoke's poor run of results in November and December, and boss Alex Neil was soon sacked and replaced by Schumacher before the turn of the year.

Vidigal was initially trusted by Schumacher early on in his reign, and did net in a 3-1 win over Birmingham on Boxing Day, but soon saw his playing time dwindle as South Korean winger Bae Jun-ho's form improved, and he only managed to make the starting eleven once in the final 15 league games, while not even making it off the bench in seven of those outings.

Vidigal will be wondering where it all went wrong for him in ST4, after he impressed upon arrival, but fell further out of favour as the season went on and is yet to feature in any senior games so far this campaign due to an injury picked up in pre-season, and other players being picked over him.

Stoke-on-Trent Live recently reported that the 26-year-old was understood to have turned down chances to leave Stoke late in the window, with lucrative offers thought to have been on the table from Turkey and Qatar, but he is still yet to even feature in a matchday squad despite presumably being ready to play, and he will surely pursue an exit in January if that continues.

The harsh reality for the Portuguese winger is that a lot has changed in the 13 months since he joined the Potters, and the recent window saw Stoke allow a number of the players that were brought in alongside him last summer to leave, with the acknowledgment that it simply hasn't worked out for them at the club.

Vidigal was seemingly no different, but he has remained in the Potteries, unlike the likes of Ryan Mmaee and Nikola Jojic, and now faces a seriously uncertain future over the next few months.

Most of those aforementioned changes happened in the transfer market, with numerous new players brought in that can play in his position, and existing players even seemingly beginning to be preferred over him at left-wing, despite it being an unfamiliar role to them.

Schumacher has moved to bolster his wide options this summer, with Lewis Koumas joining in Vidigal's position, new striker Sam Gallagher also able to play on the wing from his time at Blackburn, and Lynden Gooch being played out wide on the left at times, so while Vidigal may well come back into contention after his spell on the sidelines, it seems like he will be third choice on either wing going forward.

With that said, the sheer fact that he was not forced out of the club late on in the window may give him a glimmer of hope that he can win his place back, but it will take some top performances in reserve games, and possibly in the EFL Cup, if he is to come back into the reckoning over someone like Liverpool loanee Koumas, who has started the season well with two goals and an assist in five games.

If he is not reinstated into the matchday squad soon, then he will surely begin to become unsettled, and so a January move, either permanently or out on loan, would then be the best option for all parties to get his career back on track.