Stoke City vice-chairman Richard Smith has revealed plans to further improve stadium and training facilities at the club.
The Potters are heading towards their 30-year anniversary at the bet365 Stadium, where they have played Championship football since 2017.
The Staffordshire outfit are eventually plotting an expansion of the venue, taking the capacity for match-going supporters over 30,000 in total.
After a promising start to the 2025-26 campaign in which promotion was mooted, Stoke have fallen off a cliff in recent times.
Mark Robins's men currently sit 14th spot in the Championship rankings, a mammoth 10 points behind sixth-placed Wrexham with just 11 matches remaining of the regular season.
The Potters will be looking to avoid back-to-back defeats when they visit the base of Swansea City in South Wales on Saturday afternoon.
Stoke chief delivers training ground updates
Recently, Stoke's first-team squad moved into a state-of-the-art training facility at Clayton Wood, costing the club an initial £10m to construct.
The women's and youth sides of the Potters remain at the former base of the senior team, meaning that the club's training facilities are now branched out around the city.
However, Stoke vice-chairman Richard Smith has revealed that improvements are not completed just yet, with more money to be spent on increasing the outside area that the second-tier outfit owns.
“We’ve invested £10m in this building and we will be investing another £3m in the refurbishment of the existing building – so £13m all told and when you tot up everything we’ve spent at Clayton Wood since I’ve arrived (in 2008) it’s £25m-plus now,” said Stoke chief Smith via The Stoke Sentinel.
“You can never predict what the future holds. We’ve got land here but we have been exploring opportunities for land because, believe it or not, we are a bit short of grass. The pitches this season have been used more heavily than they’ve ever been used and we need to find a solution to that.
“We are looking at different options. I don’t know what that looks like yet and I’m certainly not in a position to share anything but we’ve been looking at things across the city that may be able to relieve some of the pressure. We’ve solved the problem of the buildings but we haven’t yet solved the problem of the pressure on the outside area.
“It’s staggering that we’ve got 35 acres here and we are still short of grass surfaces to play football on. We’ve got nine pitches on the main site and another three on the south field on the other side of the access road.”
Stoke boss hints at 2027 stadium improvements
There are also set to be improvements made to the first-team home at the bet365 Stadium, where Stoke are plotting a route back to the Premier League.
“We have also started the next project, in the planning phase, at the stadium. We will be busy planning and designing those over the next few months and then looking to implement them, with any luck, towards the end of this year if not next year,” revealed Smith earlier this month.
Stoke return to their bet365 Stadium base on March 10, when Premier League-chasing Ipswich Town are the visitors in the Championship.
FGG says: Much-needed upgrades
If Stoke want to become an established Premier League club once again, they must make their facilities attractive to top-class players.
This is clearly the aim for the Potters, who could be returning to the top table of English football in the near future with Robins in the dugout.