THERE ARE A MULTITUDE OF POINTS FOR O’NEILL TO PONDER AS HE HEADS INTO A SQUAD SHAPING SUMMER...
STOKE City are heading through a vital 13 months in a long-term building project. The owners believe in and want to offer stability - but results can swamp that and that led to four managers going inside two years as the club fell from mid-table in the Premier League to relegation scrappers in the Championship.
It is clear they are sure they have got the right man at the tiller now in Michael O’neill, who has been given licence to help re-shape the club behind the scenes. He has played a big part in revamping the scouting and recruitment departments, he has developed the first team link with the academy.
But there are big short-term challenges to deal with even when you have one eye on the big picture.
O’neill inherited a changing room where 37 players had first-team experience and he has described how he has been trying to dismantle a squad at the same time as building one that can challenge for promotion while under the restraints of Financial Fair Play.
Here are some of the key questions that keep cropping up along the way.
DO ANY OF THE PLAYERS CURRENTLY OUT ON LOAN HAVE A
FUTURE AT STOKE?
Lasse Sorensen, pictured, is still only 21 and has had a useful season on loan at MK Dons in League One, his first real taste of regular men’s football and having to fight for a shirt every week.
Tom Edwards, aged 22, is hoping to reignite his Stoke career with a year at New York Red Bulls.
It will be unlikely for any of the others currently away from the club to come back and start afresh.
All will still be under contract at Stoke next season but all will be looking for new homes in the summer, hopefully permanently but - particularly in the current market possibly on loan again. O’neill said last week: “The decisions we made to let players leave on loan, first of all in the summer, we felt were right for the club in terms of playing personnel and financially because it allowed us to reinvest in the team. “Secondly, the players we let go in January hadn’t played very much in the first half of the season. To be fair to those players, we felt it was in their and the club’s interest. “There are two types of loan.
You can send a player out on a development loan, a Harry Souttartype loan, a Lasse Sorensen-type loan, or you can send a player out because he’s not affecting your first team. I think the latter type, its’ very difficult for that player to come back and reintegrate into the club because the club has to move forward, the team has to move forward.
“At that point I have made a decision that I don’t think they’re the right player to help us move forward.
“They are still under contract, we have to be mindful of that, and going forward we have to find solutions for those players.”
THE SQUAD THAT MICHAEL O’NEILL INHERITED Have since left the club: Jack Butland, Adam Federici, Cameron Carter-vickers, Ryan Shawcross, Stephen Ward, Mark Duffy, Giannelli Imbula, Ollie Shenton, Mame Diouf,
Scott Hogan, Julien Ngoy, Thibaud Verlinden
Currently out on loan: Moritz Bauer, Tom Edwards, Liam Lindsay, Bruno Martins Indi, Kevin Wimmer, Peter Etebo, Badou Ndiaye, Lasse Sorensen, Ryan Woods, Benik Afobe, Lee Gregory, Tom Ince
Still at Stoke: Adam Davies, Danny Batth, Nathan Collins, Tommy Smith, Harry Souttar, Josh Tymon, Joe Allen, Sam Clucas, Jordan Cousins, James Mcclean, Nick Powell, Tyrese
Campbell, Sam Vokes
WILL NICK POWELL BE GETTING A NEW CONTRACT ANY TIME SOON?
Jordan Cousins is the only senior player out of contract at Stoke this summer. There are 20 senior players out of contract in the summer of 2021.
They fall into three camps: for some it will be a blessing, Stoke will be keen to tie down some and some are still decisions to be made either based on age, potential, value or quality.
Nick Powell feels like a good marriage at Stoke. He’s on a good deal at the moment at a club down the road where he is main man with the facilities, backing and platform to fulfil his potential. He’s just turned 27 and he’s scored 11 and set up another three this season with his best football hopefully still to come.
In terms of the list of talks about what happens next, he will be near the top. It will be fascinating to see how many of the group below will be here for 2022/23.
Tony Scholes said last week: “I think as you go further down the leagues, contracts tend to be shorter. If you look at League One and League Two sides they’ll operate mostly on 12 or 24 month contracts where in the Premier League they tend to be longer as they are protecting the asset value. So it’s a little bit of us moving from the Premier League to the Championship.
“There’s also, to be honest, the pandemic effect. It’s had a devastating effect on the market that clubs are genuinely scared of investing in players and putting players on long contracts because no one knows where the market is going to go. We’ve seen in the last couple of transfer windows that not a lot of activity has taken place. Perhaps our situation reflects the