Stoke City have put back plans to expand the Britannia Stadium this summer due to the amount of planning required. The club were considering filling the corner sections of the ground with seats, increasing the capacity to over 30,000.

However, chief executive Tony Scholes told BBC Radio Stoke, "The soonest we would look at doing it would be for it to be ready in 2011.

"We need to see how many seats we can get in there and how much it will cost. We need to be able to justify filling in the corners," added Scholes.

"If we're going to build a club that's sustainable in the Premier League, we need to be able to maximise our support and be getting crowds of over 30,000," stated Scholes.

"We need to keep that atmosphere that we had last year, which is significantly helped by the fact it's a sell-out and that people know that they are lucky to have a ticket."