Stoke City sporting director Jonathan Walters dismissed speculation that manager Mark Robins was about to leave the club. Rumors have emerged about Robins' future after a run of just one point in their last six games, which saw the team finish 17th in the Championship last season. However, Walters called for stability and assured that the 56-year-old former Coventry City manager will lead the team into the new season. "Rumors will always exist in football, but internally we know what's going on and the process we're following in terms of recruitment, in terms of personnel, everything that involves," he told BBC Radio Stoke. "You can't always respond to rumors. Mark is here, Mark is going to start the season. This club, over time, has been led to change everything. There comes a time when you need to offer stability to a football club, stability to the players, stability to everyone and say 'actually, we are building something, we are trying to do something'." When he was appointed in January 2025, Robins became the club's seventh permanent manager since relegation from the Premier League in 2018. Unlike many teams who drop down, and despite a healthy budget, the Potters have failed to challenge for promotion in either season since relegation, having achieved a best finish of 14th. Hopes were high last October when they were in
second place after 14 games, but a series of injuries have compromised their good start, with the Potters winning just three of their last 20 meetings. “Everyone’s expectations rose at the beginning of the year,” Walters said. "We were exceeding expectations slightly, but losing so many players so quickly, in just a few weeks, and not through muscle injuries, was the biggest blow. We had two shoulder injuries in a week, a knee, an ankle, operations one after the other. People were just adapting, we were just getting started. It will affect you and we just haven't recovered from that. Even with all that injury disruption during the middle of the season, Walters emphasized that the end of the campaign still fell short of expectations and made his ambitions clear. "Let's not kid ourselves, we can talk about injuries and other reasons why you struggle at certain times, but we didn't finish the season well enough," he said. "We knew things weren't going well at certain times and the club's expectations are not to finish 13th. The club's expectations this year are that we have to be close to the play-off places, we have to be. With the team we are building, with what we can bring, we have to be there. This is the expectation that has to be set.