It was only seven years ago when, newly promoted to the Premier League, Stoke City’s players were still arriving for training and having to change in sheds that served as dressing rooms, next to the portable toilets and ravaged training pitches full of dog muck. It was time, chairman Peter Coates reflected as he reclined in an office at the new training facilities last week, when potential new signings from any walk of life would turn their noses up at joining the club.

Now Stoke are spending £12 million on World Cup stars and luring players from Barcelona, playing some of the most entertaining football in the country and will face Liverpool in the Capital One Cup semi-final on Tuesday in confident mood.

Stoke’s profile is growing rapidly and Coates was given further proof of their rise last summer.

“I was on holiday in Singapore and we stayed at Raffles [the hotel],” he says. “They give you a butler and he was a charming young man. I got into the hotel room and couldn’t work the television so I asked the butler to help. He said: ‘Why, do you want to watch the football?’ I was a bit taken aback, I questioned what made him say that and he replied: ‘Because you’re the chairman of Stoke City.’ Amazing. The Premier League is going into 900 million homes and they’re watching Stoke now.