Stoke City F.C

Ever since I can remember, I have always been to Stoke games with my dad and more recently with my friends, however I'm going to assume that most people don't even know what or who Stoke City are. Well they are a football (soccer) team from the city of Stoke-On-Trent, Staffordshire - England and up until recently (and roughly 30 years ago or so I'm told), we haven't had much luck in the football leagues and have always ended up as a mid table lower league team. I had got used to this and with that I got used to watching my team lose at shitty football grounds around the country and even at home games we would lose to teams such as "who the fuck are reading?" (quote from one of my favourite books of all time 'She stood there laughing' - Stephen Foster). However we are now in the dizzy heights of the English Premier League playing against teams such as Manchester United, Liverpool and Chelsea; it's a lot harder for me to attend as many matches as I used to when I was younger as of course my dad used to fork out for my tickets, also I didn't have to worry about keeping a part time job at the weekend (Not to mention the increased attendances to stoke home games due to promotion).
Recently Stoke have secured the signings of England centre backs Jonathon Woodgate and Matthew Upson and England centre forward Peter Crouch (for £10m!!!) which to me is completely flabbergasting, as it still seems to me asthough we should be making mediocre signings such as Kyle Lightbourne, Chris Greenacre and the rest of those useless bunch that we all used to love*. But nevertheless I'm still amazed at how well our club has done over the past 5 years or so although I do admit to missing the good old days of doom and gloom, because to me that was all part of what being a Stoke fan was about, it wasn't about us making brilliant signings and beating one of the giants of the premiership once a season. It was which fuckup would we sign next or how long until our current manager does a runner, it was about being sat in the boothen end on a cold night at the brit blowing a gale whilst watching our team attempt to play football - 'Yeah but could you do it on a cold wednesday night at stoke?'

Now I will have to leave this post as it is for the time being, but I will be sure to update it in the near future. Thanks for reading (:

Oh and we have the best and loudest fans in the country ;) proud to be a potter

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoke_City_F.C.
* - Apart from Lightbourne, that was just me.