The 25-year-old has spent the season at Molineux so far, but following the arrival of Dan Bentley from Bristol City, Sarkic has now returned to the Championship in a bid to gain more minutes on the pitch and aid his development.
The 2020 arrival from Aston Villa is familiar with the EFL – he impressed with Shrewsbury Town in League One two years ago and made a seamless step up to the second tier with Birmingham City last season.
Despite missing a large period of the campaign through injury, Sarkic kept 11 clean sheets in 25 games and was named the Supporters’ Player of the Season at St Andrew’s.
That form led to the signing of a new three-year contract at Molineux for the Montenegro international last summer, and he has turned out three times in cup competitions for Wolves this term.
Now he heads to the Championship on loan and joins a Stoke side sat in 18th, seven points above the drop zone, but just nine off the play-off places with 18 games still to play.
Sporting director Matt Hobbs said: “Matija’s an international goalkeeper, with high potential, but at 25 he’s not played a huge amount of league games, and you’ve got to think of all your players in the football club and their development.
“We’ve balanced it, and with Dan Bentley coming in, we’re hoping Matija can go out and get 15 plus games in the Championship, which would be important to him, because he’s shown in cup games this season that he’s more than capable of playing for Wolves in the future.
“What the manager and Tony Roberts want to see from him now is to play games, so they can watch him and hopefully he can show that week in, week out he can be relied upon. That’s hard to do sat on the bench as a number two, which is why he has to go and show it at a different club.”
