£10m spent, £0 recouped - Stoke City tried and failed to hit the jackpot with 2018 addition | OneFootball

Tom Ince cost the Potters a pretty penny but failed to deliver in his four years at the club

The last seven years will not go down in the history books as successful ones for Stoke City, and one 2018 flop signing sums up the club's demise better than most.

The Potters had just been relegated to the second tier that year, after ten seasons in the top-flight, and were aiming for an immediate return under new boss Gary Rowett with numerous outgoings and incomings in the wake of their dismal final Premier League campaign.

The likes of Benik Afobe, James McClean, Peter Etebo and Sam Clucas were brought in to aid their attempts at promotion, and all experienced differing spells over the next few years at the club, but one new man was signed for big money and definitely never lived up to expectations in the Potteries.

Tom Ince was brought in for an initial £10m from Huddersfield Town in July 2018, and while he was one of their better players in his debut campaign, he mostly failed to deliver for the Potters under numerous different managers as Stoke struggled to get to grips with life in the second tier over the next few years.

His subsequent release from his contract in 2022 represented a huge loss in earnings for the club and was a clear sign that the transfer window before their first season back in the Championship was a massive failure that they are still feeling the effects of to this day.

Ince was poor for the Potters

It was an unimpressive return to the second-tier that saw Rowett sacked seven months into his tenure in December 2018, despite Ince enjoying a relatively decent start to life at Stoke with six goals and two assists in his first 18 league games, and he ended the season with seven more assists under new boss Nathan Jones as the Potters could only finish in 16th place.

Stoke had another shocking start to the season under Jones in 2019/20, as he was relieved of his duties just two months into the campaign, and Ince began to lose his place in the team under him and then new boss Michael O'Neill, and finished his second Potters season with only three goals and two assists in 40 games and 32 starts in all competitions.

Ince made seven appearances in the first half of the 2020/21 season under O'Neill, and so joined Luton Town on loan for the remainder of the campaign in the January window, coincidentally under former boss Jones, but struggled to make an impact at Kenilworth Road and so returned to the bet365 Stadium that summer.

He forced his way back into O'Neill's thinking for his fourth season as a Stoke player and netted five goals in 15 games in all competitions in the first half of the campaign before again going out on loan in January, this time to Reading to join up with his father, Paul, while Liam Moore headed the other way to join the Potters.

Ince did well at Reading and was soon released by Stoke upon the expiry of his contract in the summer of 2022, bringing an end to his disappointing four-year spell in ST4, with 14 goals and 13 assists in 103 appearances for the club.

The former England youth international failed to live up to expectations in the Potteries, and his poor spell pretty much summed up their failures of the last few years. His signing, along with other poor investments, meant that the club were unable to spend much money on players for numerous years after that ill-fated 2018 window, and the effects of that year are still felt to this day.

Ince has been good for other Championship teams

After the success of his dad, Paul, it felt like destiny for Tom Ince to go on to do big things in his career. He has impressed with other teams, despite a tough time at Stoke.

He joined Blackpool in 2011 after coming through the Liverpool academy, going on to register 33 goals and 30 assists in 113 games for the Tangerines in the Championship before a loan move to Premier League side Crystal Palace in 2014, and a permanent move to Hull City that summer.

After not impressing with the Tigers, Ince soon became a modern-day cult hero among Derby County fans as he fired them to the play-offs in his first full season and became one of their best players of that era. Stoke had hoped for something similar, hence the sizeable fee paid just a year after his Rams exit, but he was never able to find that Pride Park form in ST4.

Even after leaving Stoke and being past 30-years-old, he has impressed more than he ever did at the bet365 Stadium, after he netted nine goals and laid on five assists for the Royals in the 2022/23 campaign and thus earned a move to Watford that summer.

Ince has largely featured off the bench in his time with the Hornets, but did bag a hat-trick in the EFL Cup against MK Dons at the start of this season, proving that he still has what it takes to be a key figure for a second-tier team when needed. He was jovially booed on his return to the bet365 Stadium in February too, showing how Potters fans have clearly not forgotten his ill-fated spell as yet.

Stoke simply did not see the best of Ince, for reasons that are unclear, but his big price tag certainly wouldn't have helped his confidence when in poor form, and he was with the club during what was a turbulent time for everyone connected to it, so it is no wonder that he never truly found his feet in ST4.