Goodbye Stoke, it’s been … something
Stoke were relegated from the Premier League on Saturday following a 2-1 loss at home to Crystal Palace.
Stoke’s 10-year run as a Premier League club will come to an end at the close of the season, their fate sealed by a limp 2-1 defeat to Crystal Palace in Saturday’s early kickoff. There’s no question the Potters deserve their fate, having conceded the joint-most goals in the league this season while conceding the fourth fewest, but the club can take pride in their longest run in England’s top flight since the ’60s.
They have been for long stretches of the past decade everything one could hope for in a mid-table side (namely, an absolute nightmare to play against), but they’ve suffered for their inability to become something more, to transition from survivors to thrivers. They tried — sacking Tony Pulis, bringing in Mark Hughes, spending big on the likes of Xherdan Shaqiri and Marko Arnautovic — but they failed.
They aren’t, it must be said, the only ones. West Brom and Southampton may both join them in the Championship next season after their own, long existential struggles with life in the mid-table. West Ham, Crystal Palace and Watford have all at various points this season looked like they might go down as well. This is the reality of the modern Premier League. There is the big six, and there is everybody else.
The challenge for everybody else these days is finding a way to survive while building toward something more, establishing the infrastructure that allows a club to rise above the 14-team dogfight the relegation battle is threatening to become. Stoke spent a lot of money trying to do this, but there was never any clear plan, no identifiable playing style or identity to replace the one Pulis brought with him when he got the club promoted.
Hughes did an impressive job when he first arrived, guiding the Potters to three consecutive ninth-place finishes playing a much more attacking brand of soccer, but over the past two seasons it became clear he either didn’t know how or didn’t have the managerial ability to take them any higher. Paul Lambert was brought in as damage control, and while performances improved, results never really looked like following suit.
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If there’s any silver lining for Stoke fans, perhaps it’s that they can now look forward to a season of winning again, or at least a season of something more than treading water. As Sunderland have shown, the Championship can be an unforgiving place for newly-relegated sides, but the Potters are in a much better place, in terms of both ownership and personnel, though they may struggle to keep a hold of some of their best players.
Whatever happens, when the disappointment begins to fade, Stoke can look back on what was an overwhelmingly positive decade: an FA Cup final, a (admittedly brief) run in Europe, their first ever finish in the top half of the Premier League, the arrival of the most motley crew of former Champions League winners ever assembled and some of the coldest, wettest, most raucous nights the Premier League has seen. They can be proud of that.