HomeZ OLD CATEGORIESEPLStoke City | A transfer market preview

Stoke City | A transfer market preview

After a great season including an FA cup final appearance and another solid finish in the Premiership. Tony Pulis will yet again be pushing on, whilst trying his luck in the summer transfer market.

Stoke have already brought in Jonathan Woodgate. A top quality player but one that has been plagued by injuries throughout his career, he played the round number of zero minutes last season, but a player if kept fit has no doubt better quality than other back-up centre backs.

As we all know Tony Pulis has built a solid team around physical prowess, rather than technical skill. His signings will probably reflect this philosophy although he will probably get rid of some players if he feels he can replace them with better ones, so expect players like Ricardo Fuller and Ibrahima Sonko to be shown the door.

Peter Coates will probabably be more willing to spend this summer as well due to the place in Europe looming. I am already getting excited about the Brittania on a European night.

With this added money it raises the question, will Pulis start to change Stokes style? There is no doubt that from when we started in the premiership to how we are playing now, the style has become more attacking and the players brought in like Jermaine Pennant and Matty Etherington have brought more flair to the side. This is shown by their chance creation statistics last season.

Here are Jermain Pennant’s stats last season. He also laid on 8 assists.
Chance created from set-play 20
Chance created in open play 25
Total 45
Here are Matty Etherington’s stats from last season. He laid on 6 assists.

Chance created from set-play 31
Chance created in open play 32
Total 63

Pulis may be tempted to continue this trend and bring more creativity and less grit into the midfield. However, with the imminent signing of Carlton Cole and other bids having been made for Mahamodou Diarra and Scott Dann, I highly doubt it.

I look forward to the start of next season and with a few more signings I think Stoke can hope for a top 10 finish next season.

itsaballnotabomb
itsaballnotabombhttp://itsaballnotabomb.wordpress.com/
I write a blog about all things football http://itsaballnotabomb.wordpress.com/ follow me on twitter @ballnotbomb
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