Last Season: 12-9-17, good enough for 45 points and 12th place in the Premier League, tied with Wigan on points, but worse goal differential.
Transfers:
In: Ben Marshall (Crewe Alexandria, undisclosed), Matthew Lund (Crewe Alexandria, undisclosed), Dean Whitehead (Sunderland, £3 million)
Out: Seyi George Olofinjana (Hull City, £3 million), Danzelle St Louis-Hamilton (Loan, Vauxhall Motors), Ben Marshall (loan, Northampton Town)
Stoke is one of few teams in recent history that have been promoted and finished at a decent mid table spot. The last team to do that was Reading in 06/07 and everyone probably though Hull would have been the team to finish midtable and Stoke to be almost relegated at the midway point.
But the reverse happened and Stoke was able to pull out a decent season while Hull barely escaped relegation. Stoke was able to put together a very consistent season, they only lost by 3 or more goals four times, and never lost more than three games in a row. Being able to be consistent like this is a huge advantage in the Premier League, so often teams pick up a bad loss, or lose a close game on a heartbreaker and don’t recover for a couple of weeks.
For Reading two seasons ago, they came undone after a 6-4 loss to Spurs that saw 3 goals in the last 15 minutes from Spurs to see them snatch the win away from Reading. Reading then went on an 8 game losing streak and weren’t able to recover, dropping from 12th to 18th and getting relegated back to the Championship.
Stoke did just the opposite, after their 5-0 drubbing at the hands of Manchester United, Stoke were able to bounce back with a win against West Brom, and they did the same when they were beaten 3-0 by Manchester City. What seemed to be the turning point in their season though was their last gasp 2-2 draw at Aston Villa, where they scored twice in the final three minutes to level the score. Villa started to slip at that point, and Stoke went on to win 6 of their final 11 games.
This season Stoke look to improve upon last season’s success and not become just another one of the many teams to dabble in the Premier League only to just disappear a couple years later. You might be asking yourself how a team who’s most exciting player is a guy who throws the ball really freaking far is going to be able to continue to build on their success.
Well, Stoke is a very grind it out and get it done type of team and Tony Pulis should have this team playing his anti free flowing type of football all season. They’re not going to score pretty goals, because they can’t afford to spend the money to do so.
This is where many a team gets themselves relegated, when they attempt to play with the big boys and play a free flowing, attacking style of football. On a small budget where a team has to make do with what they’ve got, Stoke has figured out that in order to survive, they’re going to need to kick some shins and bang heads with their opponent if they’re going to survive.
They didn’t bring anyone of consequence in this season, but their back line of Ryan Shawcross, Danny Higginbotham, Abdoulaye Faye, and Andy Griffin should still be making life hard for strikers while Ricardo Fuller and James Beattie should be able to improve upon their 17 combined goals last season.
Stoke isn’t going to jump much higher than 10th-13th in the table, but they’re also not going to fall much further than that. I wouldn’t look for Stoke to impress anyone, but they’re certainly going to make life difficult for many a Premier League team.
