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Stoke City confirm major investment as players deliver inside track on life at club
Stoke City might not be in action this weekend but it has still been a busy and important week for the club, with plenty of stories from the past, in the present and with an eye on the future.
There have been players flying around the world during the international break, old heroes reflecting on their time particularly under Tony Pulis, a deep examination of the club's finances since slipping out of the Premier League, an insight from players into life under Narcis Pelach, a national title for a legend, an incredible winning run and major work off the pitch.
There has also been a suspension blow ahead of Stoke's return to the Championship blood and thunder next weekend away at QPR. Here’s a round-up of the latest Stoke news during the November international break:
READ MORE: 'We aren't used to that' - Early Stoke City verdict delivered on new boss Narcis Pelach
READ MORE: Mike Pejic's half-term report on Stoke City under Narcis Pelach
Two more games moved for live TV coverage
Two more Stoke City matches have been selected for live television coverage in the latest major round of picks from Sky Sports.
Sky have this afternoon confirmed all the EFL fixtures that will be shown on TV between the first weekends of January and March and Stoke's home matches against Oxford United and Middlesbrough will both move to accommodate their demands.
The Oxford game will still take place on Saturday, January 25 but will now kick-off at 12.30pm. The Middlesbrough game will move to Friday, February 7 (8pm) - but that is with an asterisk because that weekend is also penned in for FA Cup fourth round ties and will the fixture will shift again if either Stoke or Boro progress to that stage.
Stoke have already been live on television on 12 occasions so far this season, the first in a £935 million five-year deal between Sky and the EFL. All mid-week games are available via at least the red button, as well as matches on the opening and final day of term and Bank Holidays. Stoke have won seven, drawn two and lost three of their live games so far.
All selected matches up until the first weekend of January were confirmed before the start of the season as Sky pledged to give fans as much notice as possible about moving dates and kick-off times. Matches that will be on TV between March and the end of the season will be announced on a four-week rolling basis from February 1.
Ref slammed for Stoke-Millwall howler
Dermot Gallagher is in no doubt that referee Will Finnie will have been told to sort out his positioning after missing a clear penalty and red card in Stoke City's draw with Millwall.
Stoke players and supporters were stunned - and the Millwall camp admitted they had got away with one - after Wouter Burger was pulled back by Jake Cooper inside the six-yard box as the Potters were looking for an equaliser early in the second half at the bet365 Stadium on Saturday. Burger was then booked for dissent as he complained and will miss Stoke's next match, away at Queens Park Rangers. Stoke still went on to pull level at 1-1 thanks to a goal from Ben Gibson.
It should have been a red card as well as a penalty because Cooper made no attempt to play the ball.
Former Premier League referee Gallagher reviewed the incident in Sky Sports' weekly Ref Watch feature and said: "If I can explain something here, it's a penalty and red card for me. He makes no attempt to play the ball and grabs at him. He'd have had a clear shot at goal; penalty and red card.
"What I would say in defence of the referee is that he's a development referee. He will have spoken to his coach since that game. He'll go through it. The first the coach will tell him is that he's in the wrong position. He's clearly in the wrong position. He's gone too far to the side so he hasn't got a view of it at all. He can't make the decision. The coach will have said he needs to work on this. Give yourself the best viewing option.
"Often when we see decisions that referees get right I can say it's because the referee has worked really hard to get that view. This lad, for whatever reason, stood still and the coach will have told him he can't do that. You've got to be mobile. You've got to give yourself the opportunity. That's why the mistake was made."
Burger ruled out for QPR and trio walking fine line
Wouter Burger will serve an automatic one-game ban after picking up his fifth booking of the season.
The 23-year-old midfielder was shown a yellow card for dissent after that referee call outlined above. Finney later apologised to Stoke boss Narcis Pelach for not seeing the foul but the yellow card still stands.
Burger will miss Stoke's trip to Queens Park Rangers on Saturday, November 23 after the international break and come back into the squad for a home match against Preston North End on Tuesday, November 26.
Stoke now have three other players walking a yellow card tightrope. Ben Gibson, Ben Wilmot and Andrew Moran have all received four bookings so far in the Championship this season and will also be suspended for one match if they receive another before the end of the 19th game of the season, which is away at Sunderland on December 7.
Inside Narcis Pelach's first two months as head coach
Narcis Pelach referenced the number of days he’d been at Stoke City in a couple of answers either side of a draw with Millwall to head into the international break. He knew it had been 50 days last Thursday since he had been unveiled at the bet365 Stadium and it conjured the thought of him scratching a tally chart on his office wall. Managing Stoke, in the neutral’s imagination, might come with that kind of perception.
After all, one of the first questions for Steven Schumacher in his opening press conference last December had been about Stoke being a poisoned chalice. The first question for Pelach in September was just, why Stoke?
Out of context it reads almost like Pelach was being asked if he knew what he was in for. He was becoming the eighth boss since the start of 2018. Crucially he was also the first appointed by Jon Walters, who returned earlier this year as sporting director tasked with fixing the whole bigger picture.
Stoke had only been through a major reset last year when Alex Neil rebuilt the squad and technical director Ricky Martin shook up pretty much every other department. Walters immediately made the point that he was going to do things differently. He didn’t believe he needed to throw everything out and start again but, if results aren’t always guaranteed, standards should be.
So Walters has been ruthless if things haven’t met the expectations he has for Stoke City as a seven-day-a-week operation, trying to shake out of the win one, lose one déjà vu that condemns a club to bottom half finishes.
The proof, ultimately, will come with results and league tables over the next few years, but there is no doubt that Pelach is on the same page with his demands – and if he hasn’t carried players with him through those opening 50-odd days then they are doing a good job of pretending otherwise.
Pelach brought in double training sessions during previous international breaks as he tried to lay down his foundations and fundamentals.
Stoke have had a recent history of too many injuries so he has put a massive new focus on nutrition and body fat. If bodies have to be treated carefully during an intense period of fixtures, he has been making use of the video room for extra work. Then he’s taken the chance to reward the non-internationals with time off this week.
You can read this story in full here.
Mike Pejic crowned over-70s national taekwondo champion
Stoke City legend Mike Pejic has been crowned national over-70s taekwondo poomsae champion and been selected to go to Hong Kong for this month’s World Championships.
The former Stoke, England and Everton defender has been practising taekwondo since taking up the martial art while coaching in Kuwait in the early 1990s, coming back to run his own academy in his hometown of Chesterton.
He has been regularly winning national titles since 2013, but the last couple have been a real fight considering the major injuries he sustained when he was knocked off his bicycle at Christmas 2022, including a snapped Achilles tendon.
The 74-year-old said: “I’ve just been for an MRI scan on my spine, had a CT scan on my pelvis, seen a neurologist about problems with my Achilles and leg that might be connected with the nervous system and I’m seeing a specialist for my shoulder. Apart from that, I’m fine!
“I just try to keep going, keep training, keep trying to get back to somewhere near my former fitness level. It’s a struggle but I’m going to do it.
“I’m very pleased with these latest results. We had to campaign to have the 71-plus category introduced for men and women because we were losing too many active people in their 70s and 80s who were being asked to keep competing in the 66-plus, which was too much to ask.
“Now we keep fighting to try to have this age group represented at European and World events as well.”
Eight wins in a row and 36 goals - what's going right with Stoke City Women?
Stoke City Women might be going into their toughest game of the season this weekend but they are going into it on the back of eight successive wins. And it’s eight thumping wins too, scoring four, five, six twice, three twice, five and four while letting in just three goals combined along the way.
Now it’s a clash against unbeaten title favourites Forest at the City Ground (Sunday, 2pm) and their form has been pretty eye-catching as well. It’s 43 goals in 10 league games for them while only letting in four.
Stoke must hope their stars like summer signing duo 15-goal Millie Ravening and Shannon Stamps, who laid on a quite incredible six assists in one game last month, have been holding back an extra bit of magic. Either way, it will be a good test, a useful gauge of Stoke’s progress and, it’s pretty certain, a blast of entertainment.
“Morale is very high,” said Stoke head coach Marie Hourihan. “It’s been a fantastic run. We did bring in quite a lot of new players in the off season so knew it was probably going to take a little bit of time to bed in and get everyone on the same page in terms of how we wanted to play and get those relationships built.
"Now it’s come to fruition but the biggest thing has been confidence and belief. Once players started to see the impact of hard work in the off-season and pre-season, all of a sudden they start to enjoy themselves and it becomes a lot more natural. It’s the beauty of the position we’re in at the moment. Players are playing free and confident and it’s been a pleasure to coach.
“It’s testament to the group and the culture. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve got some fantastic players. We’ve got a small squad compared to some clubs but it’s playing into our favour because everyone is valued. Everyone has played their part in this run, which is really important. We’ve got players at the top end of the pitch who have hit a real purple patch, they enjoy playing with each other. They’re coming into training bouncing and that’s being reflected on the pitch.”
Asmir Begovic finds two words to sum up Tony Pulis and Mark Hughes
Asmir Begovic has found praise for both Tony Pulis and Mark Hughes as he reflects on the managers he has worked under during his career.
Begovic, now aged 37 and back-up to Jordan Pickford at Everton, emerged as one of the Premier League’s top keepers during his five years at Stoke. He replaced Thomas Sorensen as number one and would help secure the club’s status in the division then two top-half finishes before being headhunted by Jose Mourinho to join Chelsea.
He was asked to come up with one word to describe each boss he had worked under when he appeared as a guest on Sam Allardyce’s No Tippy Tappy Football podcast and spoke well of both of his bosses in the Potteries.
“Mark Hughes would be important for me,” he said. “The word would be important. He took that Stoke team and my game to another level which allowed me to go to a top club. He was really good and I still speak to him today. He was very important.”
On Pulis he said: “Hero. I absolutely love Tony. I owe him a lot. He messaged me the other day actually. He took me as a young kid and really gave me my opportunity. I was starting to play in the Premier League and he saw the potential along with a coach (Mark O’Connor) who was actually my youth coach at Portsmouth back in the day.
“He gave me the opportunity to play Premier League football and created a team and a culture where it was character first. We had a great togetherness. We overachieved for so many years really and it creates standards and he was the start of that. I owe a lot to him and I’d say hero.”
Of Begovic’s other managers, Guus Hiddink was ‘gentleman’, Jose Mourinho was just ‘top’ for his attention to detail and a shame that they couldn’t work together for longer, Antonio Conte was ‘winner’, Roy Keane, who he played for on loan at Ipswich, was ‘intense’ and Avram Grant was ‘mysterious’.
But it was Pulis who Begovic opted for when he was asked out of all those and more who he had enjoyed working with the most.
He explained: “I’m going to go with Tony Pulis. He knows how important he was. To buy a goalkeeper who was 20, 21, whatever I was, spend £3m and let me kick on in the Premier League and really make a career for myself meant a lot, We had a good relationship.”
Robert Huth's brilliant 'king of swearing' Tony Pulis love-in
Robert Huth worked under legendary managers such as Jose Mourinho and won a 5,000-1 Premier League title under Claudio Ranieri but he has no hesitation when he’s asked which one was the best for him as a player and who had the best team talks: Tony Pulis.
Pulis broke Stoke City’s transfer record to sign Huth, then just turned 25, from Middlesbrough for £6 million in 2009. The iron-willed centre-half would play nearly 200 times for the club over the next five years, forming one of Potters’ all-time great partnerships with Ryan Shawcross and establish himself as one of the meanest defenders in the top flight.
It didn’t all come to him, however, and he appreciates the leg work put in to make him the player he became.
Andy Goldstein, on TalkSport, asked him to pick from Pulis, Mourinho, Ranieri and Gareth Southgate for who delivered the best team talks.
“I’ve gone for Pulis,” said Huth. “He was very emotional. He got himself revved up before the team talk so by the time we got to the changing room he was ready to pick a fight with anyone. He was the one who got you up for a game.
“I think most managers definitely thought about what they were going to say. They would make sure they had 10 minutes to themselves to think about all the points they wanted to get across, then once they start they keep going and keep going.
“Pulis was the king of swearing and getting the point across to you when he wasn’t happy with you or needed something out of you.”
He added: “I loved it under Pulis, I really did. When I look back, I knew exactly what it was. Black was black, white was white and there was nothing in between. If we won at the weekend we knew the week was going to be good, if we lost we knew it would be more shape, more intensive work, more pattern of play. But most people loved it because he was always really hard on you to a point when you’d think, ‘Come on, give us a break,’ but he was always fair and that's all I could ask for.”
Bae Junho tells South Korea press about life under Narcis Pelach
Bae Junho is embracing the trust put in him by Narcis Pelach as he tries to reproduce his best Stoke City performances for South Korea.
Junho tops the Championship assists league for this season thanks to the five goals he has laid on so far under Pelach and he showed signs of his class in Saturday’s 1-1 draw with Millwall to head into this international break.
The 21-year-old playmaker, who scored in a World Cup against Kuwait on Thursday has been telling the press pack from Seoul how he has been enjoying life under his third boss in 14 months at the bet365 Stadium.
“The new coach likes me a lot and trusts me,” he said. “I think he's finding areas where I can excel tactically. That's why I can show such a good performance and it's important for me to show that performance on the national team now.
“We haven't lost in the last three games at Stoke and I think we've been playing decent games. I'm confident. I think I need to work hard to show a better performance than when I was called up last time.”
'Stoke boss has been really good with me, I've loved playing for him'
Andrew Moran is evidently enjoying his time at Stoke City, embracing the chance to develop parts of his game that need work and the opportunity to play regularly.
The 21-year-old has started 11 games and come off the bench in another three, scoring twice and setting up another four as he is trusted as a key player under new head coach Narcis Pelach, earning a recall to the Republic of Ireland senior squad.
He has shown his potential as a number 10 but also played further back next to Wouter Burger in recent weeks as Pelach tries to find his best midfield combination, particularly when the attack has been missing Sam Gallagher.
“I’ve been playing a different sort of game recently, I’ve been playing a bit deeper," he said. "The manager has been really good with me, I’ve loved playing for him so far. He’s really helped me with defensive stuff that probably doesn’t come as naturally to me. I think I’m getting quite better off the ball, I’d like to say. So it’s stuff like that. I’ve been playing with players who have played in the Championship loads in their career so I’m learning loads. It’s been really good.”
He added: “I don’t really mind where I’m playing. I feel quite comfortable now, having played deeper for Stoke, and feel like I can do it. The higher role comes a little bit more naturally but I’m fine to play anywhere to be honest, wherever the team needs me. I can see how much I’m improving. It’s not that I don’t enjoy doing it but I’m not as used to it, I’ve probably not been as exposed to it. It’s great, I’m learning loads, I feel like I’m playing all right recently and I’m really enjoying it to be honest.”
Stoke starting work on new training HQ as £30m investment plan revealed
Stoke City are starting work on a new state-of-the-art training facility to consolidate the club’s Premier League ambitions – as a £20m five-year infrastructure plan grows to £30m over seven years and with visions being added beyond that.
Contractors from Speller Metcalfe are set to begin the club’s most expensive individual project since building the bet365 Stadium, a new two-storey development for the first team at Clayton Wood on what has previously been used as a warm-up area.
The club hopes to open doors for players and staff before Christmas 2025, with the existing building then being used solely by the academy and women’s teams.
Vice chairman Richard Smith said: “We’re absolutely delighted. We can’t wait to get going. It’s taken a long time to get to this stage. We put this into our five-year development plan right at the start. We’re in year four of that now so the initial idea was some time ago and we started doing work on the actual project well over 12 months ago. To be seeing it actually starting on site is great.”
The new facility will include as gymnasium, swimming pool, hydrotherapy suite, cryotherapy suite, offices for all the support staff in the first team operation, a tactics room for video analysis and catering facilities for staff and players, with views out onto the pristine training pitches. It will be arguably the best facility in the EFL and go up against what clubs can offer in the top flight.
The demand has been pressing because of Stoke’s commitment to running a Category One academy. The evolution of youth set-ups over the last decade has seen the number of full-time staff rocket since Clayton Wood was designed for an initial £4m in 2009, with a couple of extensions since then at £1.5m and £1m each.
Smith said: “I don’t think we’ve made any secret of the fact we want to get back into the Premier League. We spent 10 years there but we’ve been out of it for a while now and we’re very keen to get back up there. I think other clubs have invested heavily in facilities in the Premier League and we want to make ourselves ready for the transition before we get in there.
“I’ve been with the club now for a long time and when I first arrived we had portacabins on this site to support the first team. One of my first jobs was to develop the building we have on the property now but we’ve outgrown that facility. We need somewhere to accommodate first team, academy and women’s team operations.
“When the Premier League’s Elite Player Performance Plan rules came into being we had to extend our existing pavilion having only finished it two years previously. We found that we needed to have more staff to qualify for category one academy and part of the requirement for this new building is so that we can sustain that so we’re not so overcrowded in the facility we have at the moment. It gives people space to breathe and hopefully improve their working environment so we can do better overall.”
Faithful's frustration explained by football finance expert
Football finance expert Kieran Maguire has made a deep dive to try to understand the frustration of worn down Stoke City supporters by ranking Championship expenditure against performance.
Maguire crunched the numbers for all five full seasons for which accounts are available in a remarkable level of dedication for a Q&A on his Price of Football podcast with Kevin Day. He zoomed in on all three – promising to go further into all six at some point we will hold him to – and came up with figures that are equally eye-rolling and no surprise to all who have been following.
He said: “If we look at the first season when Stoke were relegated, they finished 16th in the Championship with the second highest amount of revenue in the division, with the second highest wage bill and the most expensive squad. In fact, at the end of that season, their squad had cost £196 million. Not only was it the most expensive squad in the Championship, it was also higher than seven clubs in the Premier League. On the basis of that, they finished 16th.
“They were the biggest spenders in the Championship. To not get promoted wasn’t great. To finish 16th was just disastrous.
“It could be that they had signed players who were Premier League style players and were not familiar with the Saturday-Tuesday routine but would improve. So we take a look at the second season, 2019/20, and there was a marginal improvement up to 15th. The revenue was sixth highest, the wage bill was fourth highest, the squad cost was second highest and net spend was fourth. It is top six metrics in absolutely everything, with the exception of delivery on the pitch.
“I can understand the frustration. In those two seasons, Stoke were the beneficiaries of parachute payments. If we skip a few seasons to the most recent year for which we have financial results, 2022/23, Stoke have the seventh highest revenue, probably the highest of any club not in receipt of parachute payments. That’s partly due to the benefactors via bet365 in terms of the club’s commercial revenue.
“The wage bill was the seventh highest. They finished 16th, they had the seventh highest wage bill. They were still paying on average £14,000-per-week for a club which has not hit the top half of the table. The squad cost was, again, top half of the table: ninth highest."
