Young man (I think that's a reasonable assumption),
You seem to be suggesting that stoke find a way to compete with some of the biggest clubs in europe for the top 4/5 premier league spots. If that's what you think most fans
realistically want us to achieve, you're very very wrong.
I think you are arguing that without investing hundreds and hundreds of millions in a short space of time (which
should be harder with the fairplay rules), we won't be at the stage to compete for champions league etc...
But that is unrealistic. We're not going to invest hundreds and hundreds of millions. We're going to be compete for the mid-table spots (aiming for an occassional 6th) and decent cup runs every few years alongside playing some entertaining football.
The reason the club may well be able to reach sustainability is:
1. Increase in sky money with limited increase in wages (point out above)
2. We have a top class academy that will hopefully blood in some premier league and championship quality players that we can use or sell. These players will cost us almost nothing and hopefully see a tidy return when sold. Add to that buying less experienced and expensive players because we already have young up-and-coming talent.
3. Clubs may (ha!
) decide to work together on preventing the spiralling of wages that have caused most of this problem in the first place
4. Entertaining football and a thriving set-up will hopefully lead to those corners being filled in which will help a small amount off-set some of the expenses
I'm sure I've missed a few, but I think that is mainly where you're going wrong. Oh, and not being able to use paragraphs, that's really annoying