AndrewPointon.Com

Stoke-on-Trent and the footballing world were rocked today by news of Potters’ supremo plucky Pulis pulverizing previous club transfer records and landing prize catch Dave Kitson from Reading in a £5.5 million raid. The ginger hit man arrived at the Britannia Stadium today to boost City’s bid for Premiership survival in their first season in the top flight for 23 years. The former Sainsbury’s shelf stacker was once considered not good enough for his home club non-league Hitchin, but the striker becomes Pulis’ first swoop of the new season after five years of hard work and goal feasts at Reading. Kitson’s arrival eases Stoke’s Scott Carson woe, the ‘keeper choosing rivals West Brom instead after visiting the Britannia Stadium for talks. When quizzed about the new £5.5 million signing, City Chairman Peter Coates turned deathly pale and spluttered, “I must have added one too many zeros in my chequebook”.
Er allegedly, so the tabloids might have it

But seriously its been a long time coming (75 days after promotion, and 18 after the transfer window opened), but this might actually have been worth the wait. I’ve long been an admirer of Kitson although I never thought of him as a “Tony Pulis type player” to be honest. I’m staggered by the amount we have paid, partly because I’m not sure if Kitson is worth that sort of money, but mainly because it’s Stoke and I’m not used to being associated with multi-million pound signings. We’ve watched as our rivals have spent small fortunes and already brought in several players, and I was beginning to wonder if Stoke were struggling to attract players to the club especially after the debacle over Scott Carson joining West Brom rather than us. We are favourites for the drop and that could put players off. But this signing sends out a positive message. Finally a message of intent. However it has to be the first of many. I think we now have three, maybe four Premiership quality players in the squad. There needs to be many more than that if we are to compete this season and not end it in humiliation.

Mind you I have to worry about the youth when he claims Pulis was a big influence in his decision to sign. “I just warmed to him to him straight away. He is an honest bloke and seems to be a great lad, and that made it an easy decision to come here”, was Kitson’s verdict of the manager on the official website. Honest?! More like the most shiftiest looking man in Britain. Maybe he was using the term honest as employed by Stephen Foster in the splendid book “She stood there laughing”, where a player’s honesty was proportionate to his poor to average ability. If honest was the only polite adjective you could use to describe a player then you knew he was rubbish!

Welcome to Stoke Dave. Here’s to plenty of goals. (Assuming of course that the manager will play you as a striker, or indeed play you at all. Naturally you might struggle to dislodge Mama Sidibe from the side… )