Former Stoke star Liam Lawrence says Glenn Whelan would “murder” the club’s current flops.
Stoke are 17th in the Championship and 13 points from the play-off places.
Nathan Jones has won just one of his first eight games in charge since replacing Gary Rowett last month. The club were also dumped out of the FA Cup by League One strugglers Shrewsbury.
The Potters host Aston Villa on Saturday which will mark a first return for midfielder Whelan, who left the bet365 Stadium to join the Villans in a £1million deal in 2017.
And Lawrence, who was Whelan’s Stoke team-mate between 2008 and 2011, says the 35-year-old would not put up with the team’s current form.
He told the Stoke Sentinel: “If Glenn Whelan was still in this Stoke City dressing room there might have been a murder or two by now. I’m not kidding.
“If I could tell supporters just half of what I’ve heard about this Stoke squad – or certain members – their eyes would water.
“This is what Nathan Jones has inherited, and Gary Rowett before him, and unfortunately for our club we are stuck with players on long and lucrative contracts you just can’t get rid of.
“Glenn is back with Aston Villa this weekend, for the first time since he left in 2017, and I’m not sure he’d recognise his old dressing room.
“Players turning up late for training, or not turning up at all, and players clearly showing the wrong attitude in training.
“Nathan Jones is fighting fires at the moment and will probably have to carry on fighting them for many, many months to come.
“He wants a dressing room like the one we had leading up to promotion, but those can’t be put together in five minutes, particularly when the club is burdened by so many rotten apples.”
It has been a miserable first season back in England’s top tier for Stoke, which was made worse when striker Saido Berahino was charged with drink-driving earlier this week.
Lawrence and Whelan won promotion to the Premier League with Stoke in 2008.
And Lawrence believes selling leaders such as Whelan was a factor in the club’s top-flight relegation last season.
He added: “I remember when Abdoulaye Faye warmed up in flip flops before a game at Chelsea at the end of one season and Glenn ended up taking him on in the dressing room. Sorted.
“But if Glenn was in today’s Stoke dressing room he’d need his boxing gloves on half the time.
“We all know that when the likes of Whelan left and weren’t replaced, there could be trouble ahead, and here we are now, in the lower reaches of the Championship.”
Whelan joined Stoke on a free transfer from Sheffield Wednesday in 2008 and went on to make 336 appearances in a nine-year spell for the club.