The Most Cursed Football Club In England

on Boxing Day 2015 that's St Stevens's day for viewers throughout much of Europe and the day after Christmas for Americans stok City beat Manchester United 2N at the bratan stadium what would ordinarily be considered a major giant killing raised significantly fewer eyebrows at the time Manchester United were in Dreadful form meanwhile Stoke had made their home grounder Fortress Chelsea and man city had both lost there in the last couple of months alone and Victory for marus side move the Potters to within three points of their visitors two days later Stoke went and won 4-3 away at Everton Stokes six goals in two days against Man United and Everton was scored by three Champions League winners in bojan Marco anovich and Jeran shakeri plus yosu who now plays for Real Madrid for the third successive season Stoke finished the campaign in ninth sandwich nicely in between Liverpool and Chelsea The Potters had established themselves as almost the textbook definition of an established Premier League club just as they dreamt of when they won promotion back to the Top Flight of English football for the first time in over 20 years in 2008 since then Stoke have had one relegation six different managers and five successive finishes in the bottom half of the championship table now the Potter sit 21st in the second TI of English football with just one win from their last eight League games and they look to be at serious risk of relegation you might quite reasonably at this point be questioning how even that disastrous Fall From Grace could possibly Merit Stoke City the title of being the most cursed football club in England after all several teams have gone to the wall in recent years scunthorp and Southern United almost followed in their footsteps last month alone and even in the championship as I covered in recent video surely sheffi Wednesday who are yet to win a again this season are in a more dire predicament than Stoke well yes yes and yes all are in far worse predicaments but they're also in relatively easily understandable crises Stoke City on the other hand well they have all of the ingredients for Success The Potters have super wealthy local and passionate owners they are almost an hour away from any other team in the top two tiers of English football and they have spent an absolute fortune in recent years and yet Stoke just seemed to get progressively worse culminating in their current and as yet deepest malays in decades it doesn't seem to matter how managers or players perform elsewhere as soon as they touchdown in Staffordshire and come into contact with a Stoke City shirt they crumble M colonal took Northern Ireland to their first ever Europe R but couldn't guide stok City into the top half of the championship table Dwight Gail had scored 46 goals in his last 71 Championship appearances before joining Stoke but has struck just three times in 39 appearances for The Potters heck Eric Maxim chupo mang only managed five goals in 30 games at the B 365 stadium and his two clubs since then have been Paris sgain and Bayern Munich it is for that reason that I was recently asked whether Stoke City might be the most cursed football club in all of English football a cake that is baked with all of the right ingredients but still comes out tasting like so in today's video we're going to investigate whether Stoke City really are just the unluckiest team in English football or whether there is an underlying cause and something deeper a foot going on at the oldest and richest Club in the championship a lot of people probably probably don't realize just how rich Stoke City's owners are Peter coats first became the majority shareholder at Stoke City in 1986 12 years after founding a successful chain of bookmakers coats overa Stokes move from the Victoria ground to the brania stadium and enjoyed success with former Scottish International L marari at the helm but stokes's first season at their new ground was an absolute disaster Mari was s and filed a lawsuit against coats for wrongful dismissal meanwhile Stoke were relegated to the third tier of English football following a 7-n defeat against Birmingham city in January 1998 coats was forced to resign as chairman and in 1999 he sold the club to an Icelandic Consortium led by Guna galson galson became the youngest chairman in the football league following the 35 million pound acquisition aged only 30 8 and in 2002 Stoke returned to what is now the championship following a successful playoff campaign in 2006 though coats bought Stoke back for a fee of just 1.7 million reappointing himself as chairman and bringing the recently dismissed Tony pis back as the club's manager the Peter coats that sold Stoke in 1999 and the Peter coats that bought the club back in 2006 were very different men though at least in terms of the resources they were able to command coats was already a wealthy man during the 1990s but by 2006 his family squatted over a global gambling Empire at the turn of the Millennium the family founded bet 365 led by Peter's daughter Denise and in 2005 the betting chain that Peter had built up was sold to repay loans and to help build up the online business as early movers in the online online gambling industry bet 365 enjoyed rapid growth by 2006 almost a billion pound was already being wagered on the website annually and by the time Stoke won promotion to the Premier League in 2008 that had more than doubled to 2 billion and then by 2010 it was over 5 billion now bet 365 is reported to be the world's largest online bookmaker Denise coats the company's largest shareholder is one of of the highest paid Executives on the planet and has topped the UK earning charts for a number of years in 2020 Denise was paid a salary of £ 422 million and dividends of 48 million last year in light of lower profits due to an aggressive expansion into the US market following local deregulation coats was only paid a m 23.4 million in salary as well as being entitled to over 100 million in dividends hey look times are tough everyone's making cutbacks the coats family as a whole who owns Stoke through a subsidiary of bat 365 are estimated to be worth close to $10 billion that's more than any other majority shareholder in the championship by some distance and most premier league owners including those at Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United in fact the only clubs with majority shareholders who are clearly wealthier than the coats family throughout the entirety of the English football league pyramid and Newcastle United and Manchester City when Peter coats returned in 2006 he claimed the Icelandic Consortium had left stoken a mess and more than £9 million in debt neither coats nor peus were particularly popular rures at the time but together they offloaded a lot of the foreign players brought in by the previous regime replacing them with experienced championship and Premier League players like Danny Higgin botom Ricardo Fuller and Liam Lawrence Stoke almost made the playoffs That season having finished 13th the previous term and in the 20708 campaign they sealed a long awaited return to the toptable of English football in the Premier League Stoke forged a reputation for playing direct football with a big physical group of players it was a characterization that that Stoke and pist didn't always feel was wholly fair but they embraced the fear that teams had about a trip to the Britannia and made short to play to their strengths the January arrival of James BT all but guaranteed Stoke survival in that debut campaign and for the next 8 years they never really looked like going down pis took Stoke to an FA Cup Final in 2011 and European football The Following Season where the Potters reach The Knockout stage of the Europa League before cuming to defeat against Valencia in the round of 32 when pus left Stoke in 2013 he was replaced by fellow Welshman maruse who sought to take the shackles of the Uber discipline Squad that pus had assembled while sprinkling it with a touch of flare and invention in his first season Hughes signed Marco anovich in his second he welcomed bojan and in his third it was the turn of Jeran shakeri to some people's surprise the transition was an immediate one Stoke finished ninth in hughes's debut campaign their highest League finish of the Premier League era and they replicated that in the two seasons that followed a League Cup semi-final defeat against Liverpool in January 2016 just a month after the Manchester United win that I mentioned right at the start of this video is often cited as a turning point for Stoke it's interesting because whilst Liverpool are obviously Giants of not just the English but the European game they only finished one place above Stoke That season and the coats family have an almost identical estimated net worth to Liverpool owner John W Henry there was virtually nothing to split the two teams over two legs as Liverpool ended up winning the tie six five on penalties Stokes still finished ninth That season but as I covered in a recent video there seems to be such a thing as the Ninth Place curse in the Premier League whereby every team that finishes there is doomed to be imminently relegated or Worse well Stoke finished ninth three times which is perhaps why they appear to be the most cursed Club in all of England and have still not yet broken that spell the reason for the supposed curse is because ninth is a position often occupied by a team that has reached their ceiling is prone to being stripped of their manager or best players and due to the structural disadvantages in terms of breaking into that Rich six or seven face an almost inevitable decline that is a pretty good short summation of what happened at Stoke by the summer of 2016 there was already a sense in which Stoke despite their impressive League finish had begun to go stale and some sources close to the club have since claimed that Mark Hughes felt that he had taken the club as far as he could Stoke still finished 13th but they had a really sluggish end to the 201617 season with just two of their last 11 games that was likely in part because survival had already been guaranteed and they had nothing to play for but that sluggishness continued at the start of The Following season and Stoke would very swiftly find themselves with an awful lot to play for whilst at first Hughes have been able to marry the resilience and spirit harbored by pus with the spark and creativity of some of his enigmatic new arrivals in the summer of 2017 a lot of that resilience and spirit was lost and some of their Replacements were sorely lacking in that department Jonathan Walters Glenn wheen and Phil barsley were all big characters who departed in addition to Stokes Starman Marco anovich who forced through a move to West Ham Stokes arrivals meanwhile were probably best summed up by the lone signing of Hess Rodriguez not entirely dissimilar to bojan arnovic and shakiri H was someone who was once very very highly rated at a young age but whose career had stalled therefore putting him within Stokes reach as with those three Hughes felt hessi was a real kuer Stoke and that he could get the best out of him Hess twice made more than 30 appearances in UAA Champions League winning campaigns at Real Madrid as a youngster and had joined PSG only the previous summer with an anti Barcelona Clause written into his contract for25 million Euros hughes's belief that he could get the best out of Hess proved to be unfounded and that is putting things in the nicest possible terms following stins in Madrid and Paris hess's partner apparently didn't fancy relocating to stoke she subsequently sued her safe for neglect who counter sued her for slander and harassment demanding that she be sentenced to 3 to 5 years in prison they later got back together Hess seemed intent on living the life of a superstar footballer without actually doing any of the football bit joran his time in Stoke Not only was Hess useless when he played he was also entirely disinterested and as Stoke became embroiled in a bitter relegation dog fight he decided to go awall hessi wasn't the sole reason for stoke's Downfall by any means or even the worst signing that summer at least in financial terms that title would have to go to Kevin vimer a man who was signed by Tottenham for £ 44.3 million in 2015 and then somehow sold to Stoke City for a massive £18 million two years later despite only having made a grand total of 15 Premier League appearances during that time and just five the previous season vimmer ended up costing Stoke exactly £18 million for every clean sheet that he kept at the club factoring his wages and pound for pound he must go down as one of the worst signings of all time and I don't just mean it Stoke Vima just wasn't good enough though hessi might not have been as bad a signing since it was alone but he epitomized the cacophony of disinterested financially motivated clowns and kettins that Hughes had assembled heading into his final season in Staffordshire in January 2018 Hughes was sacked in truth code sort to have pulled the trigger much sooner it's understandable that Hughes had a lot of credit in in the bank following three successive Ninth Place finishes and an almost as comfortable spot in 13th but coats waited until Stoke were already into the bottom three over halfway through the season before finally deciding to act a month earlier in response to calls by Stoke fans for Hughes to be sacked coat stated that he didn't know what all of the fuss was about in a revealing interview coats appeared to intimate that because Stoke could surviv the previous season despite not playing very well he remained optimistic that they could do the same this time around it spoke to a combination of both complacency and a lack of ambition in the eyes of many stok City supporters not to mention leaving coats with egg on his face when he was forced to sack Hughes so soon after giving that interview in which he dismissed the Hughes out contingence of Stokes fans hughes's replacement also perhaps pointed to a lack of ambition after Kik Sanchez Flores turned down a contract due to a hefty relegation clause and Gary rowt decided to remain at Derby County Stoke appointed Paul Lambert a man whose last two jobs had been in the championship in the January window stok signed Constantino staf alus un loan from Augsburg morit Bower for5 A5 million from Ruben Kazan and Maris signing batt and Dy who arrived for a fee of4 million from Galatasaray Stoke needed players who were up for the and who could make an immediate impact but none of their arrivals had played in English football before crucially they also failed to bring in a center forward following the summer sale of Marco anovich to West Ham Stokes suffered from a dire lack of goals pido barino signed 12 months earlier for a potential 15 million from West Brom was still yet to find the back of the net at Stoke hessi was well probably somewhere in gr can area man bam juu found himself playing as a wing back and Peter Crouch had just turned 37 years old Jeran shakeri ended up being stoke's highest scorer That season with just eight goals only one of which actually came in a match that Stoke won it was little wonder that Stoke were relegated at the end of the season then bringing the curtain down on a decade of Premier League football to make matters even worse coats was very nearly right despite being woeful almost all season as they had been for much of the preceding 18 months Stoke very nearly stayed up just three points separated them from Southampton in 17th and a half decent Center forward in January almost certainly would have kept them up relegation can happen to any club outside of what was then the Premier League's Rich six and is now the rich seven though even if it was eminently avoidable for stoke the real question would be how they responded to that setback back one thing that the coats family can never be accused of is a lack of investment in Stoke City during the club's decade in the Top Flight Stoke spent more than a quarter of a billion pound their net spend of over £18 million was the sixth highest in the division throughout that time above Tottenham Leicester and Everton and only very narrowly trailing Arsenal and Liverpool Stokes wage bill was also considerable in the year that the club went down it was the 13th highest in the Premier League at 94 million accounting for 74% of stoke's total turnover even with the Premier League's enormous television rates Revenue coming in Stokes still lost3 million the season that they went down championship football then even with the benefit of parachute payments was sure to provide a shot to the system but the coat's family didn't scale back their investment in fact they went the opposite way the the 201819 season ended up being stoke's highest spending campaign ever as they fed out over 50 million pound in a single season even taking player sales into account stoke's net spend still totaled almost 30 million quid which was close to double the championship's next highest Spenders while retaining by far the highest wage B in the division stoke's strategy was effectively to do a Newcastle so to speak who when relegated in 200 9 and 2016 refrained from holding fire sales but held on to their best players for a single season cruised to the championship title and immediately regained Premier League Revenue it was a strategy which appeared to be not without logic at the time and Stoke were installed as strong favorites both to win promotion and the championship title that season even the most cursory of glances at their squad That season would have led any football fan to suspect that that was the most likely outcome after much consideration Stoke decided to park company with Lambert and instead appoint Gary rowt who had been one of their two preferred candidates when Hughes left the previous season the season didn't quite start as most people had expected though and tragedy turned a fast in January when rowt was sacked and replaced by Nathan Jones Stoke was sold on the work that Jones had done at Luton taking them from League 2 to the brink of the championship but his time in Staffordshire was bizarre in his first press conference Jones talked about the possibility of one day managing Barcelona the Welshman strangeness since played out on a national stage at Southampton bemused most of Stokes play Jones might have been able to nurture his own weird and wonderful world at Luton with a tight-knit squad containing several former on league players who all bought into his ideas but with a sprawling Squad of EX Premier League players and current Internationals he looked woefully out of his depth speak to almost anyone inside Stoke at the time and they'll tell you they were bemused at the fact that Jones had enjoyed any success anywhere The Potters finished 16th and The Following season they enjoyed the joint worst ever starts to a championship season before Jones was finally dismissed he was replaced by Michael O'Neal Who had done an outstanding job with Northern Ireland O'Neal managed to steady the ship and keep stok in the championship but this was a squad of players Jack butland Joe Allen benobi Bruno Martin Indie that was still expected to compete at the top end of the division O'Neal stuck it out for almost three years which is equivalent to about 400 years in recent Stoke City managerial lifetimes but having failed to deliver that Vision he was sacked following a poor start last season joran O'Neal's time at the helm Stoke face sign ific financial difficulties not because of the Coates but because of the efl's financial fair play rules particularly once they lost parachute payments in the 2021-22 season the doing a Newcastle strategy works fine assuming that like Newcastle you immediately win promotion thus offsetting your single season of enormous losses with the return of Premier League income if you don't get promoted as was the case with Stoke you're just left with the massive losses part piling up and over a few years that is enough to land you in serious regulatory trouble Stoke pulled several Financial levers to avoid being hit with serious sanctions which included offloading several High earners but most notably they sold their stadium and training ground to a subsidiary of bet 365 for more than 75 and15 million respectively you would have thought at the point at which a sub subsidiary of a bookmakers is buying a football stadium and training ground from a club they own some serious questions might be asked about the way in which English football is governed no apparently not Stoke now lease their stadium and training ground back from their owners for £ 4.7 million a season the coats family further relieved the burden on the club by rating off A10 million pound debt owed to them by the club and converting a further £40 million of debt into Equity up to that point Stoke had by far the most debt in the championship over 200 million and they have received the second most owner financing of any team in the championship over the last 10 years trailing only QPR the relief of that debt leaves Stoke with only a 92 million debt to bet 365 remaining and zero external debt nonetheless Stoke continued to hemorage Bridge cash a total of £39 million in the club's last set of accounts to be precise without owner funding in recent years Peter's son and co-chairman John coats has become the main man of the club not to the particular Delight it should be said of most Oak City fans Denise coats who took the family business online and pioneered its remarkable growth is reported to be relatively disinterested in football a bit like Hess Rodriguez on coats meanwhile like Peter is a lifelong Stoke City fan but perhaps not the wiliest of football operators though former managing director Tony skulls who was also heavily criticized spent 17 years at the club Stoke have never really had a modern director of football the club is very old-fashioned in the sense that they give enormous amounts of control to the manager themselves which combined with a hefty salary and a healthy budget still make Stoke a very attractive proposition for managers that was illustrated by how easily last season Stoke were able to poach one of the highest rated managers in the division in the form of Alex Neil away from Sunderland a massive club by Championship standards who were above Stoke in the table and had already beat them that season unfortunately stoer operating in Alex Ferguson at Manchester United star manager focused Club structure but with Chelsea style managerial turnover that is a recipe for disaster and it means that with every typically quite frequent new appointment the squad is ripped up and Stokes start all over again that is a very expensive inefficient and disruptive way of running a football club or any business for that matter and it is why most clubs are no longer run like that at other clubs you have the owners who are often quite detached then you have a chief executive overseen the club's business operations a director of football who is ultimately responsible for recruitment decisions and the footballing direction of the club and often also a technical director and a head of recruitment to assist in those roles Peter and now John coats have employed people in those or similar sounding roles over the years but they have rarely actually called the shots stoke's current technical director Ricky Martin for example not he of Liv in lva Lo of Fame is a friend of Alex Neils who worked alongside him at Norwich City and it seems probable that if Neil were sacked tomorrow Martin wouldn't be too far behind and all of a sudden stoker back at square one again Stoke fans May hope however the head of recruitment Jared Dublin will be retained Dublin is only 31 years old and he joins Stoke after Just 4 months at crisis ridden reading but already his slightly more left field arrivals like Andre vidigal and medy Laris have been among stoke's best players following another chaotic summer though stoker already down to the Bare Bones this season in their most recent 2-0 defeat against Leicester city just before the international break Stoke seven-man bench featured two goalkeepers and two 16-year-olds in Sala eBay son of Stoke City Legend mam City eBay and jayen Dixon it is important to note that for all of their faults and they are considerable as I have outlined it was the coats family that took Stoke to the Premier League and kept the club there for a decade and there are several positive aspects to their ownership as well Stoke season ticket prices for example have been frozen for the last 15 years during which time inflation has risen by a massive 50% Stoke have offered free coach travel to all away game since 2013 and the club recently submitted plans for a new 1 and a half million pound fan Zone which is part of a much larger regeneration scheme I interviewed Peter coats a few years ago for a book that I wrote about Neil Franklin and it was evident How Deeply he cared about Stoke City and the passion that he had for the sport most fans would rightly be envious of stoke for having super rich local owners who are actually fans of the club but fandom isn't a substitute for expertise Stoke may have all of the ingredients for Success then but the Chef John coats in this instance would appear to have no idea how to use them the oven has a gas leak and the cake has been allowed to go very stale stoar stuck in the past with a Leadership Model that has been jettison by most clubs now including all of the leading clubs and for very good reason for The Potters to progress the coat's family need to put some distance between themselves and the Senior Management and hire capable execu tives rather than handing out jobs for the boys then and only then a stoked City likely to be able to move forward without suffering from such chronic short-termism constant upheaval and transfer mishaps inani and buer Kevin vimer batt and die CYO barino benica phobe Tom in Sam VES and Ryan Woods Stoke have been among the most Reckless and clueless clubs in terms of transfer activity in all of England football over the last seven or eight years for a club with a settled and highly experienced ownership structure with plenty of resources at their disposal that is pretty much unforgivable the trouble for Stoke City is that in previous years when they were still rubbish but had a squad laced with quality players who just weren't performing they always had the potential to turn on the style here and there and enough times to get them out of trouble The Stoke Squad is no longer among the most talented in the championship though following a raft of ffp mandated cost cutting measures and atrocious recruitments nor is it even close the blessing for Stoke however is that as bad as they have been this season and they have been very bad Sheffield Wednesday rotheram United and Queens Park Rangers have all been considerably worse and there is every chance that they will continue to be worse than them for the entirety of this season that may very well give Stoke a temporary reprieve this season but if they fail to get their own house in order it will be just that Stoke have effectively been on the decline sometimes slowly sometimes rapidly for the last 8 years now and Goodwill alone from the club's owners will not arrest that slide so no surprisingly enough Stoke City probably aren't actually cursed they have just indiscriminately signed players and managers who succeed eded elsewhere with zero idea of what to do with them and had no strategic leadership that has left them flailing around like a plastic bag in a storm and if you have heard the wind howling or rain thundering in the background that is Storm babbit trying to get her 5 Minutes of Fame on the world's finest YouTube channel some people would find that kind of thing irritating when trying to do their job but not me I just interpreted it as a closing metaphor for the chaos and confusion of St City there is a reason why this channel has been nominated for awards anyway that is it for today's video but thank you all very much as ever for watching hit the like button if you enjoyed it let me know your thoughts Down Below in the comments and of course it goes without saying make sure that you are subscribed and have notifications turned on for both this Channel h7s and also my second Channel Alfie pots Arma both of which should be on your screens now along with a couple of videos that you might fancy watching after this one you can also find me on Twitter Instagram or threads via the username @ hc7 on all three and all of those links plus a whole lot more should be down in the video description below cheers

Channel: HITC Sevens

Views: 192,960

Keywords: HITC Sevens, Football, Soccer, Stoke City, Stoke, Cursed, Club, England, Documentary, What On Earth, Is Going On, Premier League, Championship, Alex Neil, Sunderland, Relegated, Owner, Finance, Money, Crisis

Id: W0BIq8YxgGQ

Length: 32min 12sec (1932 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 21 2023