Now that a little bit of the dust has settled and the news has trickled across the Atlantic, we know more about the Brek Shea to Stoke City news that was originally broken by Taylor Twellman. Let's start from the beginning and just recap things.

Firstly, yesterday afternoon, ESPN analyst Taylor Twellman sent out a Tweet saying that Brek had a fee agreed between FC Dallas and Stoke City pending a successful physical.

Later that evening, Greg Seltzer filed a blog post saying that no fee was agreed and that FCD wasn't even necessarily looking to sell the Texan winger.

Now today we have had three different posts that have shed a bit more light on the situation.

First off, Soccer By Ives wrote up a post confirming that a bid had been made but that it wasn't accepted.

Now let's move overseas.

Sky Sports, who isn't the most reliable for online accuracy, wrote that terms have been agreed between the teams for a fee of around £3million which is a significantly higher fee that the original $3.5 million amount. According to the Sky Sports report, Shea will arrive in England early next week for a physical.

And finally, the biggest news of all, This is Staffordshire has the quotes from Stoke boss Tony Pulis confirming that Shea is coming across the pond for a week to trial with the team.

Speaking after today's 3-1 defeat here at Swansea, Pulis said: "There's a lad coming over, Brek Shea, and we are going to have a look at him. "He was touted as a very good player who's played for the national team and he's coming over for a week so we can take a look at him."

Ridge Mahoney does have an interesting point on the aspect of a Brek Shea trial

Talking to bkshea earlier this week, he's been running and cutting and hitting balls but hasn't worn studs in a while. Bad time for a trial — Ridge Mahoney (@ridgemax) January 19, 2013

So here we are.

I've been pretty quiet on the issue mainly because my sources in Dallas with the team simply aren't talking. If there was nothing to the report, that wouldn't be the case. However, it seems extremely premature to assume that Brek Shea has been sold.

The next thing to look at is the fee between the teams. $3.5 million is certainly a bit lower than you'd think FC Dallas would accept for him. They reportedly turned down about that much from Schalke last year.

However, when you start getting into the $5 million range, which is what Sky Sports reported, then I think it becomes much more difficult for FC Dallas to turn down. Do I think FCD is actively shopping him? No. I do think that while it would hurt FCD in the extremely short term (until the summer transfer window), both sides would benefit from a move of around $5 million of Shea to Stoke.

With nearly a million dollars of cap space/allocation money freed up by the move, Fernando Clavijo can deal from a position of strength (FCD does have two starting-quality wingers) to improve positions of need (perhaps getting a long-term solution at defensive midfield).

For Brek Shea, it's a clean break from FCD with the move to the Premier League that he always wanted on a team with a built in comfort zone in Geoff Cameron and nearby Stuart Holden while Jurgen Klinsmann is almost no doubt behind this move.

So that's where we stand. Is the deal done? It doesn't seem that way. Is the deal likely? Assuming nothing goes awry on his physical - which isn't a small assumption - plans should probably be made to groom a new face of the franchise. I'm sure we will hear more from FC Dallas as early as Monday as the team begins pre-season training.