Well at least we could have three former England players in defence with Butland, Cahill and Clyne. No doubt that will make Roy happy!

Hi guys, Stoke supporter here.

So, Butland. First of all, a top bloke. Very down to earth, speaks very sensibly and he'll represent your club really well off the pitch. Very few Stokies will wish him anything but good luck. I know at this stage that means nowt, but I thought I'd say it anyway.

Now, where to start on him as a goalkeeper. We bought him for around £3.5m eight years ago and the general feeling was we'd got a bargain. 18 months later, Begovic was sold and Butland became number 1.

For a season amd a half he was an absolute revelation. Easily the best English keeper, and on form, should have replaced Joe Hart in the England goal.

Then came the injury. A broken foot while making a rare appearance for England in 2016 put him out of the game. It should have been a fairly straightforward injury, but he broke down in training time after time with people questioning his mentality until they finally found some floating bone. By this time he'd been out for a whole year.

He'd been injured at a time when the club was on a high. He returned to an absolute shambles with the management and team seemingly having gone through some sort of weird breakdown from which we're probably only now starting to recover.

The post-injury Butland just wasn't the same. You could blame the defence for leaving him exposed, but then you think that Pickford sealed a £30m move off the back of some superb performances in an abysmal Sunderland side that leaked goals for fun. Butland was a million miles from that. He was very much part of the problem for us.

We were relegated and it was fully expected that Butland's reputation would quickly seal a move to a top half Premier League side. We've been waiting for that to happen ever since. There's talk that we turned down big money offers. I'm not sure that was ever the case, but while our valuation of him dropped, year on year, any offers that came in never matched it.

Meanwhile, over the two years we've been back in the Championship, Butland's form became more and more wretched. Nathan Jones' time at Stoke turned into a tragi-comedy, but in fairness to him, Butland let in soft goal after soft goal. It was felt that pressure was put on the manager to carry on playing Butland, partly to put him in the shop window, partly to help rebuild his confidence. His dwindling abilities and error-strewn performances meant this was an ill thought out policy.

Michael O'Neill came in, but there was still no noticable improvement in Butland's form. He continued to be something of a liability, though O'Neill's more pragmatic approach to defending helped to cover some of the cracks. Nonetheless, when we came back from footballing lockdown a few months back, Butland again started costing us points, and with about five games left, we'd dropped into the bottom three.

At this point, we dropped lucky. Butland picked up a neck injury. Adam Davies stepped in, and straightaway, he started making saves that we knew would have resulted in goals if Butland had been playing. We survived and our end position makes it look like we did it with ease. Davies' form was easily the biggest reason for this. Butland never got his place back. The feeling is that Butland's neck injury was a cover story to save embarrassment and further deterioration in his value.

At one point last season his stats were shocking. Every other keeper in the Championship was saving above 50% of shots. Butland was saving 38%. He stays rooted to his line. His penalty-saving is non-existant - something like 1 in 30, not helped by him diving to his right literally every single time. His command of his box is zero.

Frankly, my personal opinion is that Pickford got into his head. Butland was earmarked for the number 1 spot at the last World Cup, but by the time he returned from his injury, Pickford had taken his place and the media were raving over his distribution, this being another of Butland's weaknesses. I think Butland spent so long working on this that other parts of his game just went to pot.

A move is definitely for the best, and it could well be that just knowing a decent Premier League team with a renowned manager want him, could be just the confidence boost needed to put him back on the path to getting back to what he once was.

I now need to give a pep talk to my 14 year old daughter who's been in tears tonight because of Jack's departure. For all his faults, he'll remain a popular lad.

I wish him and you well.

Thanks for taking the time to post the above ZomZoms. An interesting read. Let's hope the change will work for him (and us).

As someone living in the W Midlands, I hope your boys make it back up soon so I can have another reasonably local away game.

Which begs the question as to why we bought Henderson in the first place. This also means we now have a squad with 4 senior goalkeepers. There can’t be many teams willing to waste an outfield spot on a goalkeeper who will never be used.

If Butland can regain his form he will be an absolute bargain and a good age. We also don't know what is going on with Guaita maybe he has already told the club he will be returning to Spain?

Edited by Badger11 (17 Oct 2020 7.59am)

One more point

Do you mean the Brasilian? We signed him on loan with an option to buy but chose not to take it up so he went back home.

One more point