What's Happening at Stoke/How They're Doing it

[Macmoish]

Guardian/Paul Wilson

Peter Coates fast becoming a Stoke version of Blackburn's Jack Walker

The Potteries side have made great strides in a short time and are determined not just to live the dream Leeds United-style

The dust has settled on the last day of the transfer window and only one question really remains. What on earth is going on at Stoke City? After a mere three seasons in the Premier League the erstwhile Potteries upstarts are not only established as mid-table finishers and voyagers in Europe, Tony Pulis was able to comfortably outspend the managers of clubs with much longer top-flight records such as Everton, Bolton and Blackburn.

While that might not be saying much these days, given the tight financial constraints at some of the North-west's lesser Premier League lights, in signing an apparently unwilling Peter Crouch for £10m Stoke also managed to head off interest from Sunderland and Aston Villa. Considered together with the captures of Wilson Palacios and Cameron Jerome to push the summer's spending up to over £20m, Stoke's confidence and ambition stand out in the largely depressed band of mid-table clubs who are not trying to gain Champions League status and are not expected to be dragged into relegation issues.

So why are they bucking the general trend? Are they chasing a dream in the time-dishonoured Leeds United style, or is Peter Coates, the club chairman, now to be regarded as a sugar-daddy in the Jack Walker tradition, if not quite the full Roman Abramovich?

Coates, reticent on financial details but known to be injecting some of his own money into the club, fits the Walker template almost exactly. A son of Stoke and boyhood supporter of the club, he took over the Potters for the second time in 2006 with a view to doing something for the area and the community as well as the ailing team.

After originallymaking his fortune in catering, Coates is financing his present interest in Stoke through the success of the Bet365 company he founded, but though considerably wealthy he would be unlikely to set his sights so high as a league title. That was always Walker's aim at Blackburn, though the landscape has changed considerably since 1995, and to tilt for the very top now would be to invite the owners of Chelsea and Manchester City, to name but two, to a pocket-emptying contest.

Like his chairman, the Stoke chief executive Tony Scholes is keen to highlight the club's ambition, while being careful not to mention an actual target. "These latest fantastic deals are a statement of this football club's intent," he said after the deadline-day deals had been completed. "We have made incredible strides over the past five years and to attract players of this calibre shows our ambition."

There is no doubting that Stoke have made great strides in a short time. When Coates came back to the club he originally thought no higher than getting into the Premier League for the first time, but now Pulis's robust yet relaxed management style has delivered finishes of 12th, 11th and 13th in three seasons. With European football and an FA Cup final as an unexpected bonus, it appears the Potters are capable of pushing on into the top 10.

"The future is bright for Stoke," Crouch said after signing a four-year deal and meeting around 300 supporters who had turned up at the Britannia Stadium to see which players would do likewise before the deadline had passed. "I've had the hard sell from Woody [Jonathan Woodgate] all summer, telling me how much I'd like it here, and the manager has shown a hell of a lot of faith and belief in me. Tony Pulis worked extremely hard to get me here and hopefully I will be able to repay him."

Crouch's initial reservations will soon evaporate if he gets a regular game at Stoke, and an £18m strike partnership with Kenwyne Jones will give Matthew Etherington and Jermaine Pennant plenty to aim for. What Stoke themselves are aiming for is less clear, though they probably deserve more credit than rival supporters have been willing to grant them this summer.

Disgruntled fans at clubs less busy in the transfer market – from potless Everton to dithering Arsenal – have become fond of arguing that "even Stoke" are bringing in good players, using it as a stick to beat their own directors' efforts. It seems that while Coates is around, Stoke always will be interested in bringing in players and trying to improve. The chairman's first act in 2006 was to clear Stoke's debt, and unlike, say, Bill Kenwright, he has some money to bring to the table and help the club to act swiftly and decisively.

Like Chelsea, Stoke say the eventual idea is to be self-financing, but with the relatively modest sums they are paying out it is easier to believe it of the Potters. Crouch is a new record signing at £10m, beating the amount spent on Jones by £2m. "The club was in a mess and I thought I was in a position to help," Coates has said. "My family all thought I was daft to get involved again, but I thought it would be important for the area if the football club were doing well. Stoke has lost its pot banks and mining industry, and I thought Premier League football would give the place a lift. Thankfully, that is the way it has worked out."

www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2011/sep/01/stoke-city-transfer-window-coates

[Macmoish]

When Saturday Comes (WSC)/Brian Simpson

Stoke's poor reputation distorts the reality

1 September

~ Three early season events seemed to capture neatly the very mixed views inspired by Stoke City. After the no-score draw with Chelsea, André Villas-Boas was quick to draw attention to Stoke's approach to the game, not, in his view, "pushing the boundaries of fair-play, but pushing the boundaries of shoving and pushing". Sections of the press jumped in, with the Sun screaming that AVB had sensed GBH in the Stoke game plan. As Tony Pulis pointed out, the original remarks were more balanced, but that reputation follows them everywhere.

Stoke's progress since their promotion was illustrated by victory over FC Thun and undefeated progress into the group stage of the Europa League. Unlike some other managers, Pulis greeted European football as "something new, very fresh and we're enjoying every minute of it". The most recent event was Ryan Shotton's vigorous challenge on Ben Foster leading to Stoke's winning goal against West Brom. Foster's part in the goal led Roy Hodgson to suggest the goalkeeper "could have been brave… but unfortunately he decided to turn away".

Perhaps it's the Shotton goal that reveals the dilemma. Stoke are seen to be punching above their weight, making the most of it and regularly giving "bigger clubs" a bloody nose. But, as the detractors would point out, the blood is not always metaphorical. It seems too easy to condemn or sneer and patronise with "they can play some good stuff as well" as many pundits do.

Some see them as going from "back to front" too often, relying on set pieces (including throw-ins) and bullying opponents. But it's just as easy to identify old-fashioned virtues in their use of width and directness. And the Foster incident reveals a simple truth – players need to be brave and maybe Stoke test that courage to the limit. The difficulty is that reputation gets in the way of forming any kind of balanced view, in much the same way that the harrowing sight of Aaron Ramsey's injury has, for some, become the dominant visual memory of Stoke's time in the Premier League.

The broader view is to see Stoke as a club that has made progress without the huge investments that some more successful clubs have enjoyed. Owner Peter Coates has sunk a chunk of his bet365 fortune into the club – from the £10 million it took to buy the club back and settle the outstanding debts in 2006 through to the net investment in players now approaching £50m – yesterday's transfer dealings brought in Cameron Jerome and Peter Crouch. Equally, the club's care in building a squad and their handling of Matthew Etherington and Jermaine Pennant deserves praise. For all the apparent idiosyncrasy of Pulis's approach to managing James Beattie, his two wide men are playing the best and most settled football of their careers.

Etherington's struggle with compulsive gambling is well known, with his debts at one time estimated at around £800,000 and accumulated losses approaching £1.5m. Coates, aware of the potential irony created by the source of his fortune, has reportedly helped with a substantial loan and a new, front-loaded contract to allow Etherington to get on top of his debts. As Pulis has put it, the owner has "cleared the way" for Etherington to concentrate on his football. The itinerant Pennant, his childhood touched by tragedy and his teenage years distorted by expectation, struggled through five clubs but Pulis's trust has allowed him to blossom.

Coates has said that some people see the club as the model for small clubs surviving in the Premier League, and the realist in him adds "it is so easy for things to go wrong in football". Some of those pitfalls might be more easily avoided and due credit given if only they were allowed to shed that reputation. Brian Simpson

www.wsc.co.uk/content/view/7656/38/

[Macmoish]

And just a piece re Crouch/Great signing!

TELEGRAPH

Jim White: Peter Crouch's arrival at the land of the giants represents deadline day's best deal

While Arsenal took what they could get from Woolworth's, Stoke have now qualified for a charge card at Harrods.

Peter Crouch's arrival at the land of the giants represents deadline day's best deal
By Jim White

6:30AM BST 02 Sep 2011

The most astonishing thing Arsène Wenger said after his team’s humiliation at Old Trafford was that Arsenal employ 20 people in their transfer department, specifically tasked with the identification and recruitment of suitable talent.

After frantic trading as the summer transfer window closed, we can but ask this question: what do Wenger’s 20-strong group of buyers get up to for the other 364 days of the year?

The Emirates on Wednesday resembled the scene at a motorway service station as midnight approaches on Christmas Eve.

With the shelves rapidly emptying, anything available was desperately shoved into their trolley.

Injury prone Israeli reckoned recently surplus to requirements by two of your principal rivals?

Watching Arsenal spend 24 hours publicly dismantling the long-cherished philosophy of their manager as they splashed out on the overpriced and the past-it, the initial reaction was to blame the system.

How can you conduct business effectively in such conditions?

In the manner it invites selling clubs to hang on in the hope of extracting a last-minute premium, surely the window encourages nothing but panic buying.

Yet there was one club trading with quiet efficiency amid the mayhem.

Stoke City had a very good summer of recruitment, their purchases not only reinforcing their squad for the stringencies of European competition ahead, but also sending out a genuine statement of intent.

Readers with longer memories might recall John Sillett, the Coventry City manager, greeting his club’s victory in the 1987 FA Cup final with the observation that “we’ve shopped at Woolworth for far too long, from now on we’ll be shopping at Harrods”.

It didn’t quite transpire that way for City. But this summer Stoke, buoyed by the returns of Premier League stability and underwritten by the world’s wealthiest internet bookie, appear to have landed themselves a Harrods charge card.

And unlike Arsenal’s last-minute purchases, there was a sense of coherence about their spree. Not least in its scale.

Peter Crouch at 6ft 7in, Jonathan Woodgate at 6ft 2in, Matthew Upson and Cameron Jerome at 6ft 1in: the fruit of manager Tony Pulis’s recruitment drive provides pointed refutation of the Barcelona-led insistence that short is the only way forward.

Were it not for the fact Wilson Palacios is a more modest 5ft 10in we might be forced to assume the staffing policy at the Britannia is conducted entirely by tape measure.

Four internationals came through Stoke’s door this summer, men with proven Premier League and European experience and, importantly, all with something of a point to prove.

It was Crouch, though, who represents the most significant buy. He was a late, late deal, his lanky frame caught in the window of Stoke’s offices by Sky’s cameras as negotiations were conducted even as Big Ben sounded the closure of the window.

At £10 million he wasn’t cheap. Yet what a buy he might prove. This is a player with a cool head, calm temperament and track record almost as long as his legs.

In Tottenham's foray into the Champions League last season, Crouch was the club’s first choice forward, and responded with seven goals in ten games.

Unlike some of his flakier erstwhile team-mates, he is resistant to injury, not generally susceptible to dips in form, resolute and full of effort.

Yet his previous employers decided to sell him on, despite retaining players in his position of infinitely less resolve, and far fewer goals.

In the bizarre world of football finance, it is probably Crouch’s very consistency that led to his sale. His manager needed to remove some drains on his payroll before he could bring in reinforcements.

And, given that his chairman had staked his reputation against the departure of Luka Modric, Crouch was Harry Redknapp’s most immediately saleable asset. After all, no one made an offer for Roman Pavlyuchenko.

This has happened to the player time and again in his career: at Spurs the first time, at QPR, at Liverpool, at Portsmouth he was moved on despite never letting anyone down.

With England too, Fabio Capello seems to have dismissed his enviable scoring record as irrelevant, his ability to deliver apparently less persuasive than Andy Carroll’s muscular potential.

The fact is, because of his physique, Crouch is a player more prone to the vicissitudes of football fashion than any other.

Which means he may well have arrived at the right place at last. After all, at Stoke they are unlikely to fall out with a player because of his height.

At last Crouch can be welcomed where he belongs: the land of the giants.

www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/stoke-city/8735681/Jim-White-Peter-Crouchs-arrival-at-the-land-of-the-giants-represents-deadline-days-best-deal.html

[kempton ranger]

If I was a stoke fan reading these reports , I think I would be felling a bit heady . I guess we shall have to wait and see if it all goes well for them in the way of pushing for one of the top ten spots . Although it does make the EPL all the more interesting because like ourselves these player with something to prove are not languishing the reserves of the bigger clubs anymore , but are given the platform to show what they can do and in doing so will make this tighter than most people taking away from home where they might not have done so in previous season?.
;D

[Lonegunmen]

Stoke have a formidable 4 attacking options. I rate Kenwyne Jones. Crouchy nodding the ball down. Penannt proving the ammo

[ingham]

Good to see a smaller Club doing well.

Interested that they haven't abandoned the idea of spending and spending in order to become self-financing. Self-defeating rather than self-financing, one might suggest.

I can't think of many instances where it has worked. And I can't think of many reasons why it would work.

Interesting that Stoke have a system. They aren't simply signing very expensive players and playing five star football. They have an experienced manager, and a workaday style suited to a low-budget operation.

But the Premiership, it seems, demands spending beyond the Club's means. Naturally, the wealthy owner is financing it all. Or maybe he isn't. The article implies that no-one really knows.

Arguably, the easiest time to become self-financing is early on, when expectations are low and wages are low. And no doubt Stoke are aiming more at the other wannabes. The QPRs, one might almost say. But maybe QPR are doing the same thing.

Ambition decides how successful a Club wants to be. So talent is always a poor second. And especially the difficult business of acquiring that talent. Learning the game. And discovering, as most ambitious Clubs must in an environment with so little to win, and so many Clubs trying to win it, that they haven't got the talent.

When it is too late. When the money is spent. The state of football club finances doesn't really support the idea that you spend a bit, and you earn a LOT more. The more you spend, the more you have to spend just to tread water. And the losses make it that much harder to do it.

I'd be more impressed if they made their way on talent. But the owner's rationale isn't really that he has a special talent for the game, but that he has a lot of money. If the money the Club spent reflected his talent for the game - in other words, he had earned it through a talent and success at FOOTBALL (not something unconnected with the game) - then everyone would KNOW how good he really is.

But this business of playing catch-up, with spending always marching far ahead of achievement, suggests not just that they haven't the required ability - which is overwhelmingly likely - but that they KNOW they don't have it.

And that is an entirely different matter, especially if it comes to heavy spending.

It would be far easier, and MUCH cheaper, to use his talent to earn money for the Club rather than losing money because he hasn't the talent.

Perhaps that is why he is close-mouthed about the Club's finances.

Generally speaking, if an investor knows it is unlikely that the Club will make money, but his PR suggest that his 'intention' is that it should, we might expect the discrepancy to show up somewhere in the accounts?

If the risk is loaded onto the Club, say. As it usually is.

Rather than onto the investor.