Stoke City have massively underachieved this season. Of the three teams to come down, Stoke and West Bromwich Albion were the two names expected to have at least challenged for their immediate return.

Swansea, to their credit, lost the majority of their ‘Premier League ready’ players. Stoke and West Brom didn’t and were able to keep hold of their talent primarily on the promise and thought of promotion.

West Brom have held up to their end of the deal but Stoke really haven’t. Their squad is that talented that they have a player like Sam Vokes sitting on the bench.

A spine of Jack Butland, Ashley Williams, Joe Allen and Benik Afobe should be nowhere near 16^th place.

It is extremely hard to believe that an attacking outfit of Afobe, Vokes, James McCLean and Tom Ince playing in front of the creative minds of Allen, Charlie Adam and Bojan Krkic are the third lowest scorers in the entire division.

This is because there has been a lack of consistent throughout Stoke all season. They have had more starting XIs than any other team in the Championship. They have not had a consistent team or even formation for their matches which has confused both the supporters and players.

This has been largely due also to a lack of consistency in management too. The switch from Gary Rowett to Nathan Jones was a strange one. Both are better suited to squeezing results out of tough games, not scoring many goals and focusing on not conceding.

This has been Stokes undoing. The players they have got are actually quite creative. They are of a much better footballing quality than most teams in the league. They haven’t used this to their advantage by playing football.

They have played this season exactly how they were playing in the Premier League for so long without realising that they are now one of the better teams in the league.

They didn’t need to focus on defending as much in the Championship because their defensive players like Butland, Williams and Ryan Shawcross are some of the most experienced and best in the division.

They instead needed to focus on harnessing a new way of playing football and instead look to their more talented creative players at the other end of the pitch.