Peter Coates decision was the final nail in Stoke City's Premier League coffin: View | OneFootball

Paul Lambert was hired as Stoke boss amid relegation trouble in January 2018, and it turned out to be as bad a decision as many had expected

Stoke City were in the midst of serious relegation trouble as boss Mark Hughes was sacked in January 2018 but new manager Paul Lambert was no better and his appointment turned out to be the final nail in the Potters' Premier League coffin.

Stoke had enjoyed some fruitful years under the guidance of Hughes, but had begun to drop off due to some poor transfer decisions and club unrest, and so started the 2017/18 season in poor form, with the 54-year-old eventually relieved of his duties just after the turn of the year.

The Potters' chiefs surprisingly turned to former Aston Villa and Norwich City boss Paul Lambert to turn their fortunes around, as he was given a two-and-a-half-year contract despite his previous jobs being at lower-end Championship clubs, with 15 games to keep the Potters afloat in the top-flight.

As it turned out, chairman Peter Coates' decision to appoint Lambert was the final blow to Stoke's chances of Premier League survival, as he led the club to relegation with a miserly record in the second half of the campaign, and duly departed at the end of the season after just four months in charge.

Paul Lambert failed to improve Stoke's poor performances

Stoke did have a good enough squad to stay in the top-flight that year, with the likes of Xherdan Shaqiri, Badou Ndiaye and Kurt Zouma alongside stalwarts such as Ryan Shawcross, Peter Crouch and Jack Butland, but Hughes' management had begun to cause fall-outs and disruption among players behind the scenes, which led to awful form and his eventual dismissal.

That meant Lambert was tasked with restoring unity in the squad, as well as improving results, so he was arguably already fighting a losing battle as soon as he took charge, but still should have done so much better than he did with the talent he had at his disposal.

The Scotsman's reign got off to a great start, as Stoke emerged 2-0 victors over Huddersfield Town thanks to goals from Joe Allen and Mame Diouf to move out of the relegation zone into 17th, but that was really as good as it got for the rest of the season.

Individual errors and poor shows of defending were littered throughout the next few games as the Potters failed to pick up maximum points from matches that they really needed to against the likes of Watford, Bournemouth, Brighton, Leicester City and Southampton.

A four-game winless streak unsurprisingly followed against Man City, Everton, Arsenal and Spurs, but Lambert remained sure that his players were "fighting for everything" with some huge relegation six-pointers still to come.

They were still unable to secure the vital victories that they needed though, with three consecutive draws against West Ham, Burnley and Liverpool, despite taking the lead in the first two, and were all but down heading into a crucial clash against Crystal Palace in the penultimate game of the campaign.

Palace won 2-1 in the Potteries, despite Lambert's side again going in front through a Shaqiri free-kick, and Stoke were confirmed as relegated to the Championship after ten years in the Premier League, with the last game of the season seeing him record his second and final win in charge as Stoke beat Swansea City, but it was all too little, too late for Lambert and the Potters.

He departed by mutual consent just five days after the conclusion of the campaign, despite being given a long-term contract when he was first appointed, and it was clear that the club's hierarchy knew they had made a mistake in bringing him in, and had missed a trick by not landing their main targets such as Martin O'Neill, Gary Rowett, Quique Sanchez Flores, or even Graham Potter, who all could surely not have done much worse than he did.

Lambert wanted to stay on as Stoke boss

Despite his dismal few months in charge, Lambert exclusively revealed to Football League World last year that he thought he was going to be given a chance by the Potters' chiefs in the Championship, while hinting that some of the squad continued to be troublemakers even after he had taken charge.

He said: "I went in there with 15 games of the season to go. I loved my time at Stoke. It was a brilliant club.

"Peter Coates was an absolutely brilliant guy to work for. I loved Peter Coates. I think he was a great chairman. He’d been over the course before. Tony Scholes (chief executive) was great. I had a really nice time.

“Stoke asked me to stay on going into the Championship because they were quite happy with the way things were going. I said: ‘Yeah, no problem’ and then after the Swansea game, I think John Coates took over and said they were going to make the change.

“Ok, I didn’t expect that because a few weeks earlier I was staying, and then John took charge.

“Peter Coates, his father, was brilliant but a change happens and you move on. A brilliant club with brilliant support.

"We were so unfortunate not to stay in the league that year because we gave it a right good go. There were some good guys there and some not-so-good guys, but the majority of the guys were great. I don’t have a problem with that because I really enjoyed my time there."

Stoke are yet to return to the Premier League since Lambert's tenure ended prematurely in 2018, and while he was certainly not the cause of the rot that led to their relegation, it is fair to say, in hindsight, that he was not the man that the club needed at that moment in time.

Whether he would have turned the Potters' fortunes around in the second-tier and done a better job than Gary Rowett, who succeeded him as boss and lasted less than eight months in charge, will never be known, but his subsequent poor spell in charge of Ipswich Town definitely makes that outcome seem unlikely, at best.