Five years have passed since Stoke City's relegation from the Premier League, and since then there has been five bottom-half finishes in the Championship for the Potters.

The Staffordshire outfit cannot seem to get out of their rut but they have tried plenty of different things to make things different - both on and off the pitch.

There has been a number of restructures behind the scenes at Stoke since the start of 2022, which started with long-serving chief executive Tony Scholes departing, a new COO appointed in Simon King and Andy Cousins being promoted from lead analyst to head of football operations.

More changes were made though later on in the year when Alex Neil was appointed as head coach to replace Michael O'Neill, with Ricky Martin arriving from West Ham as technical director - someone who Neil had worked with before at Norwich City.

And in March it was revealed that Cousins would be departing from his role at the end of the season in another mini-restructure, although it was reported at the time he had plenty of opportunities available to him - and The Athletic are reporting that he's landed a big role at Premier League giants Chelsea.

Who is Andy Cousins?

Cousins arrived at Stoke in 2019 under the management of Michael O'Neill as the club's lead analyst, but his good work led to his promotion in 2022.

City had a technical director until 2019 when Mark Cartwright departed, and Cousins' new role of head of football operations was essentially the same thing - managing the football side of the business and all of the staff.

The change in role for Cousins was made by O'Neill but when he departed, Neil's man in the form of Martin arriving late last year seemingly pushed Cousins out, and he has been on gardening leave since March and that will end tomorrow on May 31.

Why are Chelsea hiring Andy Cousins?

Cousins has clearly done some promising work with Stoke, and Chelsea are set to appoint him to a senior role in their scouting and recruitment team.

That is a side of the Blues that has been overhauled massively since the takeover of Todd Boehly - they have two sporting directors in Paul Winstanley and Laurence Stewart and a technical director in the form of Christopher Viveli, as well as Joe Shields as director of recruitment.

It represents a big step up the ladder for Cousins, who will be stepping into a club that needs to make changes following a disastrous 2022-23 season where they finished in the bottom half of the Premier League.