This article is part of Football League World's 'Fan's Voice' series, where we gather original opinions from those closest to the clubs concerned on matters surrounding their team and share them with a wider audience...

Stoke City have endured a frustrating few seasons in the Championship, with the club looking to return to the Premier League once again this term. 

The Potters are currently sat eighth in the second-tier standings, and will be looking to pick up three points in their next match against Huddersfield Town.

Football League World's Stoke City fan Elliot Yates has given us his TOP-TEN greatest ever players of all-time with the club to date.

Find out who kicks us off at number ten on the next page...

Disclaimer: The views cast from various supporters in the Fan's Voice series do not represent those of Football League World.

A record £10m at the time of his arrival, Peter Crouch was the first ‘big name player’ Stoke had in the Premier League. To this day he is still Stoke’s all-time Premier League top goal scorer with 45 goals and the only player to play for Stoke in the Premier League 100 club.

In his debut season, under Tony Pulis, he scored possibly the best Stoke goal of all time against Manchester City in 2012, becoming a key player for us when Stoke reached the knockout stages of the Europa League the same year and he finished top scorer with 14 goals.

Under Mark Hughes, two years later, he was able to adapt to a passing team and was top scorer twice, in the Hughes era, with Stoke finishing in a record 9th place three seasons in a row and reaching the semi-finals of the League Cup for the first time since 1972, just missing out to Liverpool on penalties. Like a fine wine he got better with age.

Known as the Golden Boy at Stoke Mark Stein was one of the most natural goal scorers in the club’s history. In total Stein scored 72 goals in 131 appearances in his first spell at Stoke, but he always delivered in big games.

Second Division Stoke beat English champions Manchester United in the 1993 League Cup at the old Victoria Ground 2-1 with Mark Stein scoring two worldies past the best goalkeeper in the world Peter Schmeichel to give Stoke a famous victory and the commentator quoting “this man’s magic”.

He then scored the winning goal in a 1-0 win against Stockport in the Autoglass Trophy at Wembley, an achievement still celebrated today. Stein was the best striker outside the topflight and had Premier League clubs on their knees begging to sign him, eventually joining Chelsea for £1.5m.

At Chelsea, he broke a Premier League record for scoring 8 games in a row, the record was later broken by Ruud Van Nistelrooy and then Jamie Vardy more recently.

Considered by many to be the greatest player to never play for England, Greenhoff was a gifted, two footed footballer who scored a multitude of goals. Over the course of seven years Greenhoff scored 76 goals for Stoke in 274 appearances and was part of the League Cup winning side that is still the club’s finest hour.

Greenhoff was a dynamic player who could play midfielder or up front developing a great partnership with John Ritchie who finished top scorer most years, majority coming from Greenhoff assists. His best goal for Stoke came against Birmingham City where he controlled the ball on his chest from outside the box before volleying it into the top corner, beautiful.

Manchester United purchased him for £120,000 after financial problems at Stoke in what many United fans described as the ‘bargain of the century’ and Greenhoff would pick up another 5 major honours along the way.

Picking up Marko Arnautovic for a measly fee of just £2m is some of the best business Stoke have ever done. Stoke fans hadn’t seen a player like him in years he was a tricky and fast winger who could get you off your seat. His swagger and maverick style was something Stoke fans fell in love with and comparisons to Zlatan Ibrahimovic were becoming more frequent.

Arnautovic was part of the holy trinity with Bojan and Xherdan Shaqiri who became integral to Stoke in the 2015/16 season and helped us to famous victories over Manchester United, Manchester City and Everton in the Christmas period and put Stoke as early contenders for Europe as well as given us the nickname 'Stokalona' for some of the exquisite passing football we started playing.

Arnautovic wrote his name into Stoke folklore scoring the equaliser against Liverpool at the Kop End to level the tie in the league cup semi-final and nearly get us to the final at Wembley one of his eleven goals that year.

He leaves a sour taste in the mouth for Stoke fans in the way he left to join West Ham, but I’ll always remember him for the good moments which makes him a Stoke legend.

A rolls-royce midfielder Steven N’Zonzi was world class. Clubs such as Barcelona, Arsenal and Chelsea have been after his signature in the past and it’s no surprise why. He’s strong, powerful, quick and reads the game excellently, some of the best performances I’ve seen from Stoke have come from Steven N’Zonzi.

I think back to the games where we beat Liverpool 6-1, Tottenham 3-0 and Man City 1-0, N’Zonzi was immense and the heartbeat of our midfield. When he left in 2015, we struggled to find a replacement for him and seasons after we saw just how good a player he was, leaving us a hole we couldn’t fill.

N’Zonzi since leaving Stoke then picked himself up a World Cup winners medal with France in 2018 and was part of a side consisting of Kylian Mbappe, Antoine Griezmann and Paul Pogba.

Captain, leader, legend. Ryan Shawcross has been an ever present in Stoke City teams of recent times. Ryan is a defender who can ping a pass, puts his body on the line and above all else a leader who inspires those around him. Shawcross has notched up 450 appearances in total for Stoke, with 317 of them coming in the Premier League.

In his first season he helped Stoke win promotion in 2008, manager Tony Pulis then made him captain in 2010 and he was on Fabio Capello’s watch for England’s World Cup qualifiers. Shawcross guided Stoke to an FA Cup Final in 2011, becoming the first captain in Stoke’s history to lead them out in an FA Cup Final.

His partnership with Robert Huth was a major factor in Stoke having one of the best defences in Europe in 2012 keeping nine clean sheets in 18 matches conceding just 13 goals. He is still at Stoke today and even though he hasn’t been playing as much as he used to, he is still loved and adored by all and it will be a sad day in the Potteries the day he hangs up his boots.

Alan Hudson is a god for Stoke City fans. If I had to compare him to someone playing today, I would go for a player such as Jack Grealish, but a more refined version who had a lot more elegance about him.

Stoke had been a very good side for a long time in the 70s, but when Hudson arrived from Chelsea, we became immediate title contenders for the old First Division coming second in the 74/75 season, still a club record finish in the top flight.

Hudson made 105 appearances for Stoke City in his first two years at the club which shows just how valuable he was to Stoke City and what a crucial player he was for the team. He later returned to the club in 1984 and was named club captain upon his return.

Not many people know the story of Neil Franklin and the people who do will tell you just how great he was, in the 1950s defenders were mainly just big lads who hoof the ball away from time to time.

Franklin was different he’d carry the ball out of defence as a ball playing centre back when most wouldn’t even dare and what most people see in modern centre backs now, he was way ahead of his time and the finest centre half in Europe and probably the world.

For England, he played in every international from the end of the war until the 1949 British home championships earning 27 caps which was a record at the time.

Definitely the best English goalkeeper of all time and arguably the best ever in his position. Gordon Banks arrived at Stoke City from Leicester City after winning the World Cup with England, the only English goalkeeper to achieve this, and would go onto make 250 appearances for the Potters.

Stoke were a good team when he arrived in 1967 but he took them to the next level, to quote former defender Denis Smith “He made us from a good side into a great side”. Banks then put himself and Stoke on the map when he made the save of the century from Pele in the 1970 World Cup, and that save was zoomed all across the world.

Pele was so sure it was going in he even shouted ‘Goal!’ as the ball left his head. Gordon helped Stoke win the League Cup in 1972, the only major honour in Stoke’s history.

He contributed immensely by saving a crucial penalty from Geoff Hurst against West Ham in the semi-final which saw Stoke advance to the final and win the illustrious trophy. Without Gordon we probably wouldn’t have won the trophy.

The man who taught us the way football should be played’ the great Pele once said. Stanley Matthews revolutionised a lot of what we see in the modern game today and was ahead of his time, from his training regimes to his diet.

Football’s first superstar and the first recipient of the Ballon D’or was renowned for his dribbling ability, where he would drop his left shoulder fooling the defender one way and then going past him on the right flank to cross the ball, earning him the nickname 'The Wizard of the Dribble'.

Unfortunately for Matthews the war years robbed him of his prime, but he still drew crowds to war time matches and exhibition games. He left Stoke for Blackpool in 1947 after falling out with manager Bob McGrory, which led to outrage in the city of Stoke-on-Trent, however he would return to the club 14 years later in 1961.

On his return Stoke’s previous attendance rose by nearly 27,000 when Matthews came back for his first game against Huddersfield Town and he was still the best player at the age of 46. He announced his retirement aged 50 and his farewell match at Stoke’s old stadium, The Victoria Ground, included Lev Yashin, Ferenc Puskas, Eusebio and Alfredo Di Stefano all playing, with 112 million people tuned in from all over the world.