Stoke City chairman Peter Coates says they'll be careful with their transfer spending.

City splashed out £20m on deadline-day signings of Peter Crouch, Cameron Jerome and Wilson Palacios last year, having also added free transfer signings Jonathan Woodgate and Matthew Upson to their wage bill.

Coates told The Sentinel: "Are we going to spend like we did last year?

"We can't afford to, and neither can any other club our size.

"You can only have a squad of a certain size, otherwise they are all standing on the sidelines.

"What's clever about that? So you only want a squad of a certain size and ours is already self-evidently too big.

"It's the same for other clubs. Arsene Wenger is saying he has to get players out at Arsenal before he can get them in. We are no different.

"What we want is the best 25 players we can get, but that's easy to say."