Stoke City hit the buffers in catastrophic £12m Wolves raid | OneFootball

Stoke City signed Wolverhampton Wanderers striker Benik Afobe for around £12m after their relegation from the Premier League

When Stoke City faced relegation after ten years in the Premier League back in 2018, the general consensus was that the Potters would bounce back at the first time of asking, backed by the billionaire Coates family, but what transpired was truly underwhelming, to say the least.

Stoke's ten years in the top-flight, consisting of route one football under Tony Pulis, an FA Cup final, reaching the Europa League knockout stages, evolving into ‘Stokealona’ with the likes of Xherdan Shaqiri, Bojan, and Marko Arnautovic in their ranks under Mark Hughes, came to a bitterly disappointing end in 2018.

Hughes’ time at the helm ended with a 2-1 defeat in the FA Cup to then League Two Coventry City at the beginning of January, as former Aston Villa boss Paul Lambert was tasked with keeping the Potters afloat, though with two wins in 15 games, Stoke fell into the second tier after a decade in the top-flight.

Lambert was dismissed and replaced by Gary Rowett, who had just guided Derby County to a sixth-placed finish in the Championship, narrowly losing out to Fulham in the play-off semi-finals, with the former Burton Albion boss provided a war chest worth over £50 million to spend on incomings following his appointment.

Spend it right, and Stoke could very well take the league by storm. Spend it poorly, and a near decade of hangover, regression, and stagnation ensues, as the Potters splashed out an eight-figure sum on a new centre-forward that they hoped could fire them back to the Premier League.

Stoke City signed Benik Afobe from Wolverhampton Wanderers for £12 million in the summer of 2018

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With both Peter Crouch and Jon Walters ageing, the latter having joined Burnley a year prior, and Saido Berahino and Mame Biram Diouf misfiring, Stoke lacked a natural goalscorer that would get them the numbers required to fire them towards the Championship top two, and decided to splash out £12 million on Wolverhampton Wanderers’ Benik Afobe.

Afobe was 25-years-old at the time of his arrival, and the former Arsenal youth player had made a name for himself in the EFL with the likes of Huddersfield Town, MK Dons, and Wolves, before spending two-and-a-half years with Bournemouth in the Premier League, where he would head back to Molineux in January 2018 on loan with an option to buy for £10 million.

That option would be triggered by the Old Gold following their promotion to the Premier League, with Afobe netting six in 16 appearances after re-joining the club, but just 11 days later, he would be heading approximately an hour north to Stoke, who agreed to give Wolves a swift £2 million profit after less than two weeks.

Afobe would be Rowett’s marquee signing in a summer which saw Stoke spend over £50 million on the likes of the striker, Tom Ince, James McClean, Peter Etebo, Ryan Woods, and Sam Clucas, as the former Derby boss stamped his authority at the bet365 Stadium.

To say it would be a disaster would be an understatement.

Afobe netted from the penalty spot in Stoke’s opening game of the season, a 3-1 defeat at Leeds United in Marcelo Bielsa’s first game in charge at Elland Road, and then again in his first home game in a 1-1 home draw with Brentford, having a bright start to his Potters career.

A four-game goalless drought ensued before netting a brace in a 2-2 draw away to Sheffield Wednesday, as Stoke were failing to hit the heights expected of them following relegation, looking more like a relegation candidate than a title contender.

Indeed, it would take Afobe until the start of December to net his fifth goal for the club, a 2-2 draw away to Reading, and then his sixth two games after that, another 2-2 away draw, this time to Aston Villa.

With Stoke massively underperforming and underwhelming, Rowett was dismissed in January and replaced by former Luton Town boss Nathan Jones, but results didn’t exactly pick up under the Welshman, with the Potters winning just three games after matchday 27, with Afobe netting just twice after Jones’ arrival, with the £7 million arrival of Sam Vokes in January subsequently damaging his playing time.

Stoke would finish 16th, and Afobe would finish the season with eight goals and two assists in the Championship, and from there, his Potters career would essentially be over.

Benik Afobe never lived up to his hefty price tag at Stoke City, with his career never truly recovering

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Ahead of the 2019/20 season, Afobe joined Bristol City on loan with an option to buy, but off-field issues severely limited his playing time, as he made just 12 appearances during his spell with the Robins, and then joined Turkish side Trabzonspor on loan for the 2020/21 campaign.

A loan to Millwall for the 2021/22 campaign followed, linking back up with former boss Rowett at The Den, where he would find his feet once more, scoring 12 and assisting three in 38 league games in the capital, before making a permanent move to The Den the following summer.

However, his contract with the Lions would be terminated after just six months, and since then, he has spent time featuring sparingly in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar leagues, never truly finding the form that saw Stoke drop £12 million to bring him to North Staffordshire.

In total, Afobe scored nine and assisted twice in 51 games for Stoke, averaging over £1 million per goal, as his addition is just one example of the Potters’ poor recruitment over the years that has seen them languish in the Championship ever since.