Stoke City chairman Peter Coates has assured fans that manager Tony Pulis will be handed a healthy transfer budget.

"There is a lot of money coming into the club and it's up to us to manage it well," he told The Sentinel.

"We haven't even begun to get our plan together yet because we were never going to get ahead of ourselves and none of us felt comfortable making any plans for the Premier League until we crossed that bridge.

"Now we are going to be working very hard in the next few weeks to put a proper business plan together to make it work for the club.

"There's no doubt we have to strengthen with some quality players. We are determined to put out a team to compete at the higher level."