At what point does exceeding expectations become meeting them? The question of where the trip-switch between these two points is a most curious one, and we might argue that there none so curious in the entirety of the Premier League than Stoke City Football Club. It has now been five years since Tony Pulis took the club into the top division and this intervening half-decade has always had a hint of gravity defiance about it, but survival in the Premier League should become more comfortable with each passing season of membership and that the club is being tipped by some to struggle this season is simultaneously – and, yes, completely contradictorily – both something of a surprise and considerably less than one. On the one hand, we might ordinarily look at the newly-promoted teams as being those that we might expect to struggle and we might also consider that those who only narrowly avoided relegation at the end of last season might not find things so easy this time around. So, why is there a sense of tetchiness hanging over The Britannia Stadium as the club’s sixth successive season of Premier League football begins? The answer to this question seems to be three-fold. Firstly, there is the small matter of the departure of Tony Pulis at the start of the summer. Pulis was, of course, hardly a popular figure...
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