Burger's departure shouldn't leave a sour taste in fans' mouths

WOUTER Burger introduced himself to his teammates by diving straight into card school on the team coach to Millwall, where he made an exciting 45-minute second-half debut as orchestrator and key man in about as encouraging a 1-0 defeat as possible.

- Peter Smith

He introduced himself to most supporters a few days later when he scored with one minute and 12 seconds on the clock in his home debut - a 6-1 Carabao Cup annihilation of Rotherham.

The midfielder had been billed as the marquee £4.3 million signing in a sea of incomings that summer - overseen by then boss Alex Neil and technical director Ricky Martin - and those early days were full of hope and optimism about what was to come next.

Unfortunately, the reset turned into a major malfunction.

As Burger leaves for Hoffenheim, it is tempting to go through all 19 signings again, but the bottom line was that Stoke had a huge opportunity to overhaul the squad and, as we suggested just before the window opened, "burn off years of apathy".

It was a frustratingly slow start and they had so many spinning plates a couple of weeks into preseason that it became uncontrollable.

Nick Thorley, AKA Pottermouth, put it best in a furious call to Radio Stoke after a pathetic performance and defeat at Blackburn Rovers the following February: "Ricky Martin talked about key performance indicators and mentioned all kinds of KPIs that he worked towards.

"I would like to suggest a different metric for those KPIs. How about goals scored, goals conceded, games won, games drawn, games lost.

"Ricky Martin has overseen the most disastrous recruitment process at Stoke since I started supporting them in 1992. He's taken a very average Championship squad and turned it into a very poor Championship squad that can't score and can't keep a clean sheet.