well said Waddo Ive never read such ****e in all my life. What a load of old **** he cant be a stoke fan.
How Rude......
A guy called Voltaire once said something along the lines of
"I may disagree with every word you say but I will defend you unto death your right to say it."
I believe there are two ways to respond to comments that you do not agree with, reasoned debate or a list of expletives..... I prefer the first.
I believe every club has a natural place to which they gravitate. Several factors affect this position and only drastic changes to an area can affect them. Owners and managers, through their decisions, affect where we sit in comparison to this line only in the short term.
So, let’s look at how some of these factors affect Stoke.
Ground Size
26th largest in the English leagues
Catchment Area
Stoke on Trent at 239k is the 22nd largest city, supposedly only Nottingham is smaller in size with more than one professional club to cater for. Naturally comparable or bigger teams are close to the south, east and northwest of the Brit. I now live in south staffordshire and have 5 professional clubs closer. The pubs are full of Wolves, WBA and Villa fans. My point is more than 20 teams have the luxury of a better natural catchment area.
Affluence
Stoke has had a dire macro economy my whole life (I’m 44)
The deaths of the pottery and mining industries were a blow that Stoke is still yet to recover from.
Unemployment is right now at 10%
Perhaps the best measure of an areas success is population growth. Between 1991 and 2001 Stoke shrank by 3.5% - A feat only matched by Birkenhead, Salford and Belfast.
History
I’m not sure where we stand in an overall success league but one league cup, two Autoglass trophies, and our league positional and European history surely cannot make us top 20.
All in all, without rose tinted specs I found in the Boothen, I’d say our natural level is championship.
This is why I continue to be so enthralled by SCFC being on MOTD every week. TP and PC are leading us into a fourth year of fighting above our weight and while it continues I shall back them vociferously irrelevant of anything else. 4TH bottom shall remain my own personal objective for Stoke as long as we remain at the elite level.
What they have done is slowly becoming recognised as the model to over achieve. We are the new Wigan or Bolton but one day, mark my words, we will gravitate back to where we should naturally be.
I’m happy for anyone to denigrate what I’ve had to say just please use something other than an *