The 4 Things Gary Rowett Must Fix To Make Stoke City A Premier League Club Again

The 4 Things Gary Rowett Must Fix To Make Stoke City A Premier League Club Again
14:17, 23 May 2018

Gary Rowett has been confirmed as the new manager of Stoke City after a £2m compensation package was agreed with his former employees Derby County and the new Potters boss will have a busy inbox to deal with when he sits down at his new desk. The priority for Rowett will be to get Stoke back in the Premier League after their ten year top-flight stay was ended by relegation earlier this month and we take a look at the four things that Rowett will need to address straightaway...

Player Recruitment

Stoke goalkeeper Jack Butland lamented the club's "farcical" signings after relegation was confirmed as he firmly laid the blame at the feet of the raft of expensively assembled failures. The likes of Giannelli Imbula, Bojan Krkic, Ibrahim Afellay, Saido Berahino and Jese may well have been among those that Charlie Adam was referring to when he told the BBC that "four or five" of his teammates had been "getting away with murder for a long time".

Rowett will need to ship out the dead wood during the summer and he will need to have a good look at player recruitment, with a striker surely top of his shopping list during the transfer window. 

Improve The Attack!

It won't be difficult for Rowett to organise Ryan Shawcross and co. defensively as they were brought up on a diet of Tony Pulis, but there are clearly issues at the other end of the pitch. Despite the creative talents of Xherdan Shaqiri, Stoke managed a paltry 35 goals in 38 league games last season and it is not surprising when you consider their strike force consisted of the erratic Mame Biram Diouf and Eric-Maxim Choupo-Moting, the disinterested Jese, the 37-year-old legs of Peter Crouch and the wayward Berahino - a man who hasn't scored a goal since time began.

Discipline

Adam's comments about "four or five" of his teammates shows how far morale had fallen in the Stoke camp during the course of a dreadful season and Rowett will need to identify the players he wants to keep. It will take tremendous powers of negotiation to sell some of the more 'difficult' individuals off the back of their wayward efforts last term and it is difficult to see a future for Afellay, who was told to stay away from the club by Rowett's predecessor, Paul Lambert, during the dying embers of the campaign. The new boss will have to find a core group of players who want to be at the club and can be trusted, using them as the basis for moving forward.

Keep Joe Allen

With that in mind, Joe Allen has three years left on his contract and Stoke must do everything in their power to keep hold of the midfielder. An excellent professional, Allen has barely put a foot wrong since signing from Liverpool for £13m in the summer of 2016 and he is one of the more highly rated members of this squad. Rowett has his work cut out in trying to convince Allen, Butland, Shaqiri and a few others to spend a season in the Championship.

It is clear that Rowett's man-management skills and transfer dealings this summer will define Stoke's 2018/19 season.

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