Stoke City a ‘very attractive’ proposition for summer transfer targets

Player of the year Ben Wilmot believes Alex Neil’s vision for Stoke City makes the club an attractive proposition for potential summer recruits.

Wilmot is in a small pool of senior players who will stay in the first team squad from the season just finished, hoping and expecting completely different fortunes when the new one kicks off in August.

Neil is looking for additions and improvements in every department and his blueprint for aggression, intensity and speed should be enticing.

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Wilmot, who recently penned a new long-term deal, said: “You can see when we went on that run that we were a very aggressive, high-pressing side that wanted to play a quick style of football but a possession-based style of football. I think that is a very attractive style for players coming in.

“Bringing in players I don’t think will be a problem. The facilities and everything the club has are of a Premier League standard so on a day-to-day basis, it’s a great place to be. You’re working at a Premier League training ground really.

“The project you can see forming here is a good and positive one. As long as the lads they look to bring in are willing to work hard and run hard, they’ll fit in perfectly with the group we’ve got now and the way the manager wants us to play.”

Wilmot, aged 23, is unequivocal that Stoke will head in the right direction under Neil – and promotion alone is not the sole ambition.

“The hardest bit is getting there,” he said. “I feel like once the club is back in the Premier League, there is no doubt that with the owners we’ve got and our infrastructure, we will be staying there for a lengthy period of time again – but the Championship is so hard to get out of.

“It’s no wonder that the club has struggled in the last few years but I feel like this window, with the core group we’ve got in at the moment and a few signings around that, the club will be in the best position to go up than it has been for four or five years.”

That comes on the back of a difficult season which ended with Stoke finishing 16th. There were flashes of potential, topped by the run into the spring, but Stoke only won back-to-back matches twice and didn’t win any of their last seven.

Wilmot said: “It has frustrated the life out of us this year, knowing the quality we’ve had, that we haven’t been able to perform well enough, regularly enough.

“But the manager has managed to put his stamp on things now, which you could see in that month period when we were doing really well.

“With the window coming up it gives him time to bring in players he feels necessary. Then in that good six-week pre-season we can get on the training pitch and really work on the style of play he wants us to play, which will give us a really good foundation for the start of the season.

“Everyone should be really optimistic about next season because I know myself and the rest of the lads who are in the building at the moment are optimistic and it will be a really good season for us.”

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