Will Stoke be leaving it late again?

It’s looking like a typical Stoke pre-season on the transfer scene with only one key player signed so far.

This time last year we only had Dave Kitson on the books, this time around we just have Dean Whitehead. Tony Pulis has made it clear that he feels he needs another striker and there’s been no shortage of players linked to the Potters. West Ham’s Dean Ashton is one that seems to head the list of likely candidates, but, once again, Stoke are having to play a waiting game in their quest to sign the right players.

Tone says, quite rightly, that he values quality over quantity and is quite happy to wait until the right player drops into our lap. But there’s no doubt that getting new players in before the season gets under-way is preferable to waiting until fifteen minutes before the transfer window slams shut as we were forced to last year, when we signed Tom Soares and Michael Tonge on the stroke of midnight after the likes of Joe Ledley never materialised. Such desperate measures proved not to be such a good move with neither of them justifying a regular first team slot.

However, the more likely scenario is that we’ll get a couple of players in just as the season gets under way as they finally realise their opportunities are better at the Brit. Arguably, our best signing of last summer arrived in August in the large and forbidding shape of Abdoulaye Faye.