“No matter how accomplished, no matter how creative, a certain type of foreign player must answer a question when he crosses the English Channel. ‘Can you do it on a wet Tuesday night at Stoke?’ The fact that Spanish playmaker Bojan Krkic Perez is currently ‘doing it’ at Stoke—creating goals—tells us a lot about the state of English soccer. To explain: It is Stoke in this question and not, say, Newcastle or Aston Villa. Manager Tony Pulis led Stoke to the Premier League in 2008, but promotion didn’t mean Pulis suddenly had time for false nines and triple stepovers. Stoke had a strategy, and it worked.” 8by8