Stoke City’s new head of recruitment has a 10-year problem to fix but I’m worried how he’ll fund it
Good luck to Ian Torrance as he starts work as Stoke City’s new head of recruitment. It’s a big job but not an impossible one. It is integral to everything that he bucks a long-time trend and makes sure that when you’re looking to replace a player, the one you’re bringing in is better.
There is a decent core to work with here who are under contract for a while – Viktor Johansson, Wouter Burger, Million Manhoef, Junior Tchamadeu, Nathan Lowe, Bae Junho – but it’s not enough. Beyond those players we’ve managed to get stuck in a short-term cycle of loans and disposable signings that haven’t worked.
At the same time, it is a punch in the guts to sell your best players to try to fund signings. Nathan Collins and Harry Souttar were a rare beast of player we’ve had over the last few years who we could build the team around, who could set the standards drag us up with them towards the Premier League. There will be interest in Johansson and Burger this summer and it feels like we’re back in the same boat and rowing against the tide. It’s deflating to go through all this once but we’ve kept doing the same things, which is maddening.
The loan system is here and it’s got to be used but we have to do it wisely. We knew, whether it was Tom Cannon or his January replacement Ali Al-Hamadi, that our main striker was only going to be borrowed until the summer. I’ve been desperate for a forward plan to make sure that, when that happens, one of our own will be ready to step into their boots. But Emre Tezgel had scored twice in four games by the end of August, even if they were Carabao Cup ties, and has only made one start since then, in the FA Cup.
Where will we look to replace Andrew Moran when he goes back to Brighton? It feels like if Sol Sidibe was at a Premier League club – and plenty have wanted him over the years – we’d probably try to sign him on loan. It’s not right to give more patience and priority to other clubs’ development projects and it’s short sighted.
We should have long been seeing Stoke’s teenagers come in and out of the team, tried here and tested there, until they’re ready to become number one in that role. Instead we’ve been getting a glimpse and then zap, they’ve vanished for ages.
It’s not a case of throwing our kids into the deep end in the top division. You have to be cruel and say it, we’re a second division club and we’ve been at the wrong end of that for far too long.
The whole transfer market and amount of loans as a whole is crazy. It started with Chelsea years ago when they went out and got kids from all around the country and the world to fill their youth team, hogging players to stop anyone else getting them. Lewis Baker had only played on loan for anyone until he joined Stoke at the age of nearly 27!
Then having nine substitutes and managers fixated on squad rotation means there are plenty of players who are largely spending their careers on Premier League benches rather than being a hero for someone else actually, you know, playing football.
It’s a lot to get off my chest but it’s important because we have to get it right. No matter what else is happening at the club, everything boils down to the quality of player you’re sending out to play for you. That will ultimately dictate the fate of Mark Robins. As Tony Waddington used to say: “If you want to be a good manager, sign good players. If you want to be a great manager, then sign great players.”
Stoke just haven’t got it right enough over the last decade. I look back on the summer of 2015 when Mark Hughes’s goalkeeping department went from Asmir Begovic, Thomas Sorensen and Jack Butland to Butland, Shay Given and Jakob Haugaard. Butland was ready to be number one at that stage but we were just ticking boxes to fit it with no thought on progression. It sums it up. You can look at every other position and see the same decline.
It’s high time for that to change. So yes, good luck to Ian. Yes, it is a big job but it’s nowhere near as impossible as we’ve made it look.
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