Stoke City Appoint Mark Hughes As Manager to Replace Tony Pulis

Stoke City have confirmed that Mark Hughes is the club’s new manager. Hughes replaces Tony Pulis on a three-year deal

“I am an ambitious manager and this is an ambitious Club. We want to become a consistent top ten Premier League Club, and I firmly believe that with an incredible amount of hard work we have a great chance of achieving that.”

According to Stoke City Chairman Peter Coates, “We have analysed everything he has done, and we feel that he has a remarkably fantastic record as a manager. We looked at what he did at Fulham, and Blackburn in particular. They are similar Club’s to us in many ways, and we feel that he is coming here into a similar environment.”

While Hughes will strive to not make the same mistakes he made at Queens Park Rangers, it’ll take a while for Stoke City managers to warm up to him especially after the catalog of errors he made in the summer of 2012 when he signed the following flops at Queens Park Rangers: Jose Bosingwa (free transfer), Stephane M’Bia (£5million), Esteban Granero (£7million), Park Ji-Sung (£2.6million), Robert Green (free transfer) and Andy Johnson (free transfer.

Soccer fans in the United States will get a chance to see Mark Hughes close-up in action when Stoke travels to America to play Houston and FC Dallas.

What’s your prediction about how well (or not) Stoke City will do under Mark Hughes? Does he have the ability to lift up this Stoke City side and to get them into the top 10 next season? Or are they now relegation candidates? Share your opinions in the comments section below.