As much banter as we had when we both got promoted. You have to take your hat off to them into Europa cup proper, and on paper have a bloody good squad. Tony Pulis not as daft as he looks in his baseball cap!
They've thrown a fortune at it, £43m written off by the owner already, they've done well with it, but with £60m a year and an additional £43m from the owner, I could have probably put together a half decent team.
That and mahhosive amounts of free cash. We couldn't afford a manager that wasted cash on transfers at the rate Pullis does.
I think the £43mill's quite conservative too. I've read much, much higher figures when it got broken down.
we were a sinking ship when he hopped off to do some gardening! so sticking by him wouldnt have done ****! i think a lot of people fans and players lost respect for him after the man city episode! but at this level id say if pearson fails bring him back with a warning not to overspend!
They've become like a Bolton/Fulham we're you expect them to be mid table and out of the relegation fight. Credit to them as an unfashionable club for becoming a settled top flight club. They've spent money but seem to have spent it wisely with decent top flight players. Even if you go back to our first season in the premier league they got Beattie, we got Manucho. Regardless of what Duffen or Percy thinks, you only have to look at the fortunes of both clubs since then to see who probably made the right decision.
Pulis had a Stoke side getting results and outside the relegation places, Brown didn't. Hence why Pulis still has his job and Brown doesn't.
They've now got a team well capable of staying up now though. Looking at the £40m debt we had that the Allams covered off, and the Premier league money, there's probably not a great deal of difference in terms of finances both had available (accepting of course that the Stoke chairmen would have under written any excess spending)
Much of our funding was used to service debt, all of theirs was spent on players, there's the difference.
And therein lies the difference of a rich benefactor writing off £40m and a club borrowing £40m (that means it needs paying back) as well as £10m+ interest on that borrowing.
The Stoke owner hasn't written off £43m, he has has invested his OWN money into the football club which has added considerable value to the Football Club. His financial input along with Sky money and other revenue streams and good management have made Stoke City FC worth probably well over £100million now if he wanted to sell the club, thereby returning his investment with some more on top. The massive difference between the 2 clubs since promotion was that we had a chairman with a licence to spend someone else's money (which happened to be borrowed on ludicrous terms too), and along with the then manager this money was spent disasterously. Massive contracts and not a single player bought with a resale value or relagation terms!!!! Meanwhile Stoke, with very good management, bought players with resale value such as Etherington, Jones, Huth, Walters, Pennant etc and put together a very good competitive squad. Ultimately Stoke had Pulis & Coates doing a great job for them, and we had Bartlett/Duffen & Brown doing a bad job for us.
Who has Pulis wasted money on? I can't think of anyone. Sure players have moved on, but that's because they signed far better replacements.
That's all true, I didn't mean he'd actually written the money off, merely that they were initially personal loans to the club, which he converted to shares, writing off the debt the club owes him personally. If they continue to do well, then he does have an asset worth more than his investment, though if things go wrong(as often happens in football) and they get relegated, they will soon be down to crowds of 15,000, substantial losses and he'll have no chance of getting his money back. It's a calculated risk, one that's currently paying off, but there's still a reasonable chance that at some point down the line, he could now lose a lot of that money. Still, it's a pity Peter Coates wasn't a City fan.
Indeed he is not. Pulis has done what Phil Brown should have done but did not have the brains or pulling power to do. Nor the owner / backer to help him out. City went up with the 3 wreckless cowboys and that proved bad in the end. There is no doubt that the Allams and then Pearsons could very easily keep Hull City in the PL on 60million quid tv cash if we get there again. Its just a shame that the PL was not reached with AP in charge of the money. Paul Duffen must have been married to Vi Nicholson who won the lotto and Spent Spent Spent. Stoke City are the new model for PL safety, both on and off the pitch. TP has changed his squad each summer in a fair and prudent manner. Cut off the bottom 6 or so and add better than he has got. Its a simple model and one that can keep any club in the PL. Mad Mick @ Wolvers is trying to do the same and he may just keep Wolvers up there again.
