From what I understand neither us or Swansea will sign him. Destined for big things so expect a big club to take the plunge. Arsenal or Liverpool in this country or another big European team.

Got bounced back to High Court after European Court to confirm if the high court agreed. Today, the High Court agreed. Which means she has won her case. I'm told that the Premier League logo is a copyrighted image. Every single shirt has it on. Therefore I doubt this actually makes any difference. B...

With Maccy D being given "the exact transfer budget" he asked for, but "not being allowed to break the wage structure", will he do the thing you used to be able to do on Champ Man, and offer massive signing on bonuses to make up for a short fall in wages? That's how Stoke keep t...

With Maccy D being given "the exact transfer budget" he asked for, but "not being allowed to break the wage structure", will he do the thing you used to be able to do on Champ Man, and offer massive signing on bonuses to make up for a short fall in wages? That's how Stoke keep t...

FiNeRaIn Just seen the conference." they'll be no change at reading, the only change will be that there ismoney coming in to support it"

In my wildest fishing dreams I never thought this possible.

Someone pinch me.

It's too bizarre....

Too good to be true. After watching all that. Bizarre that SJM appears to hae actually found the perfect buyer. Quite bizarre really

melonhead

spending 40 million quid on half a football club

i read it as the whole deal was for 40 million, but theyve only aquired half the club for now
ie theyve spent 20 million on 51%

Thought SJM valued us at more than 40 million..

Investors in football typically fall into 3 camps: i) Local Business man supporting local club ii) Big Ego, Big Wealth iii) Look at us, we've found a way to make money out of football anyway. You're holy grail is probably i) and ii) combined. Which for a while we had (until he lost all his cash), St...

Jimmy kebe will not be joining stoke.

Tax Dodge? bet365 remain on shore when there is simply no reason to. Simply moving the operation to Gibraltar (where they have a gaming business already) would save the company 13% in GPT (gross profit tax - bookies pay a tax on how much they "win" from customers) on what they keep of that...

You may be right - in which case expect wages to rise for all the other players soon. Or it may be that the new players have agreed to fit into existing structure in order to play - Crouch especially. Or it may be that their contracts are loaded with bonuses and incentives, with a relatively low ba...

But Stoke are running their business in more or less exactly the same way that Reading are - by looking at income and spending accordingly. Let's look at the income figures : Stoke City PL Prize money : £6.048M TV income (including facility fees) : £43,620M Total : £49.668M (excluding gate income a...

floyd__streete

Royal Rother Oh Lordy.

You must be impressed, Rother. Stoke have taken 'our' model.....and improved on it immeasurably.

Fair point that. Plus being owned by a successful business helps...

There are only 7(SEVEN) our of 20 clubs in the Premier League who have spent all of the last 11 years at that level. And several of those have had dodgy seasons towards the bottom end. They are the really obvious ones. Pretty much everyone else gets relegated at some point eventually. How cheerful....

Nice bit of due dilligence from Stoke on the Kitson transfer then! Having heard the interview with the guys at West Brom who signed Shamus, they have gone in to the minute detail needed to ensure he wouldn't be a bad character to have around the place. Stoke WILL be relegated within the next couple...

As long as he joins another championship club, it's 3 points (and a pen) in the bag for us!

Nowhere near the player he was. Not worth the money and really, who discusses their job/contract like that that on twitter...?

Stoke signed Sonko for £2m. He made 14 appearance in 2 and a half years. He left on a free. Stoke are clearly in safe hands. Let's not forget Dave Kitson, signed for £5.5m - 2 and a bit years, 40 appearances, 5 goals. Sonko played. He was slow. Got sent off. Gave away 2 penalties. They loaned him t...

This also means we are hopefully safe from giving away loads of penalties and being forced to play with 10 men...

He was shocking at Stoke - we got the best out of him when he was last here and don't see the point of getting him back.

I'm sure Stoke fans are sat in their droves right now thinking "I wish we were more like Reading". Well that really isn't the point I was making. Stoke fans are like all fans, stupid. There's a decent proportion of them who wanted Pulis out at the start of last season! Admittedly they see...