Mark Robins is willing to be patient and won't dramatically alter things immediately after walking through the door at Stoke City as the club search for stability following 12 months of constant change at management level. Robins is the club's third permanent boss since Christmas last year, when they lured Steven Schumacher away from Plymouth Argyle.

Despite overseeing the summer transfer window, Schumacher was axed in September, but successor Narcis Pelach didn't fare much better and was relieved of his duties shortly after Christmas. Throw in interim boss Ryan Shawcross, and the Stoke squad have had to contend with differing messages and approaches in a particularly short period of time. The experienced Robins intends to introduce an equilibrium in the first instance.

He will take charge of only his second match when they head to Sunderland for the third round of the FA Cup on Saturday (kick off 3pm), but behind the scenes Robins will incorporate his own ideas slowly. The word 'incremental' deliberately popped up on a number of occasions during his Friday press conference.

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"I'm the third manager of the season, and they've had Ryan for a short spell as well," Robins said. "You need stability, and the same messages for an extended period of time for those to stick. We're not doing too many things differently to what they were doing before, in the first instance, and then begin to drip feed things after that.

"We just want them to be the best version of themselves as quickly as possible, so it gives you an ideal picture, an overall picture, of what they're capable of doing going forwards. Some may fall by the wayside, some will come to the fore. I'm hopeful that as many as possible come to the fore and, if they're not in the starting XI, force themselves into the reckoning.

"We're in a privileged position. This is a really great football club. This is the club we've decided and have been chose to represent. You can never take that for granted. We have to try and incrementally - and I'll use that word quite a bit as well - build what we essentially will become. There isn't a magic fix."

Stoke spent 10 years in the Premier League, a period which also involved an FA Cup final and a European tour, but they've failed to finish in the top half of the Championship since returning to the second tier in 2018. They currently lie 17th and have routinely been looking over their shoulder rather than upwards in recent seasons.

Robins, who spent over seven years in charge of Midlands and Championship rivals Coventry City before taking up the reins at Stoke on New Year's Day, has been impressed by what he has discovered behind the scenes by way of the facilities and resources on offer to players and staff.

Plenty of money from the Coates family has been invested into ensuring that Stoke remains an attractive destination for players, but in the here and now the message from the new boss is pretty simple - and it involves a lot of hard work on the training pitch.

"It's a juggernaut of a club," Robins added. "It's a juggernaut and we have to slowly try to turn into a forward direction, and then start pressing the accelerator. We are talking about taking Stoke from where it is now to where it belongs... you can't go from one to the other, the endgame. You have to put things in place and go step by step, which takes time. It's incremental."

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