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Stoke City make statement of intent with huge investment plan
Jon Walters believes Stoke City’s new £12m training ground investment is a statement of intent.
Stoke are starting work on a new state of the art first team building at Clayton Wood and sporting director Walters is confident that it will give players and staff the platform to unlock their full potential with no excuses.
“This is first class,” he said. “As a player coming here, you’re thinking you’ll be able to get everything out of yourself. There are no excuses. What we want to make sure too is that it’s not a comfortable place. We have to give players every tool to produce on the pitch, every recovery tool, and a place where people love to come in and work to get the best out of themselves. That has to be the mentality. It’s what we want from every player, every member of staff.
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“It’s a statement too as a club to everyone here, to everyone else in the league, to everyone else around, that we’re not here to sit back. You’ve heard about the five-year plan that is being extended to seven years and we keep wanting to improve. We want to go somewhere, we want to be better than ever before and we need the people to do that, in a building like this, to keep pushing us forward.”
This building is part of a major investment programme at the training ground and stadium that was initially intended to cover five years but will ultimately prove ongoing.
Stoke are limited in terms of what they can spend in the transfer market due to Financial Fair Play rules but chairman John Coates is allowed to sign cheques for infrastructure and will put in about £30m over seven years.
Walters said: “First and foremost it shows the mentality of the owners and the direction they want to take the football club. It’s part of a wider project and it’s a message to everyone at the club about where we want to be, where we want to get to.
“For attracting players, young, older, players from other clubs or coming through the academy, it shows that this is a club not resting on its laurels. We already had a first class facility as it stands, a Premier League level facility, and to have a £12m building on top is phenomenal as a sporting director.
“It shows the backing from John Coates, the ambition to progress the club and drive it is music to my ears and matches my mentality, where I want to take the club and a mentality shift at the club. We haven’t finished higher than 14th in the last six or seven years and to really get that intensity and mentality shift doesn’t just happen. To have an owner like John behind you, driving it, his passion and love for the club, getting that into the players and staff, it’s only heading one way in my eyes.”
