Stoke City’s 2018 Wolves deal was start of a disappointing and costly sequence
The previous campaign had seen the Potters relegated from the Premier League, after ten consecutive seasons in the top-flight of English football.
As a result, the club found themselves preparing for life back in the Championship, where, despite the drop, they still found themselves able to invest some significant funds in the transfer window.
That allowed them to bring in a number of players during the 2018 summer market, with nine new players added to the club’s first-team squad.
He had spent the second half of the 2017/18 campaign back on loan with his former club Wolves, where he impressed with six goals in 16 games, helping them win the Championship title.
As a result, Wolves then made his move permanent at the start of June 2018. But despite that, it was announced on the 12th June 2018, that Stoke had completed the loan signing of Afobe.
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One of the conditions of the loan move, was that there was an obligation for the Potters to purchase the striker on a permanent deal in the 2019 January transfer window.
It was reported that the deal to complete Afobe’s longer-term move to the Britannia Stadium would cost the club around £12million.
In the end though, there is an argument that paying that money for the striker, did not exactly work out as Stoke would have wanted it to.
There is admittedly, unlikely to be too many fans of the club, who would have been disappointed to see the Potters complete a permanent move for Afobe in January 2019.
The striker had produced a solid start to the 2018/19 campaign for the club, scoring seven goals in 27 appearances in all competitions.
However, those strikes would become less frequent after his move became permanent, with Afobe finding the net just two more times before the season concluded.
Despite that, he did still finished the season as Stoke’s top scorer. Even so, the campaign as a whole proved disappointing for the Potters, as they finished 16th in the Championship, a long way from a push for an immediate promotion back to the Premier League.
Having seen his record in front of goal dip, Afobe was then loaned out to another Championship club, Bristol City, in the summer of 2019.
Having made that move, the striker began life at Ashton Gate in excellent fashion, with three goals in his first five games, only for a serious ACL injury to halt his progress.
Although he returned to action for Bristol City for the delayed end to the 2019/20 season, he was unable to find the net again, and the Robins did not make his move permanent.
After returning to Stoke in the summer of 2020, Afobe made one League Cup appearance before heading out on loan again, this time to Turkish side Trabzonspor, for the 2020/21 campaign.
Five goals in 29 games was not enough to earn him a permanent move there, and instead, Afobe found himself on the move again in the summer of 2021.
That move saw him remain in the Championship with a loan move back to his former club Millwall, where he rediscovered his scoring touch to some extent, with 13 goals in 41 appearances in all competitions for the Lions.
His form in that time was enough to convince Millwall to bring him back permanently, with Afobe moving to The Den for an undisclosed fee.
In doing so, the DR Congo international brought a definitive end to his time with Stoke, having never been able to replicate his form in front of goal from his loan spell, after becoming a permanent Potters player.
As a result, this is one deal that those of a Stoke City persuasion, may feel ultimately did not work out quite as well as it seemingly could have done on first glance.
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