Few would begrudge Peter Crouch, one of football’s few remaining nice guys, a contract extension that prolongs his career by another twelve months.

And yet, at the age of 36, Stoke’s decision to give their towering target man a new deal earlier this week encapsulates how the club has stagnated and arguably regressed under the guidance of Mark Hughes - a manager who was once tasked with bringing an alluring style of football to the Bet365 Stadium but now finds himself reverting back to the tactics of his attritional predecessor Tony Pulis.

No doubt, Crouch’s height and guile makes him a valuable asset for any club in the Premier League’s bottom half, all the more now he has over 700 career appearances’ worth of experience to lean on. Even at the end of his mid-30s, the former England man is still regularly changing games from the bench.

Only Anthony Martial has scored more goals than Crouch as a substitute this season, and few have made such an impact in terms of results. From the bench, Crouch has provided two late equalisers and one late winner, earning more than a third of Stoke’s 13 points in the Premier League.

Likewise, there’s something to be said for an old-fashioned professional; a player who will never cause his manager problems, who will never make the newspapers for the wrong reasons and who won’t walk out of the club for the sake of his own career. Amid modern football’s increasingly corporate era, truly trustworthy figures like Crouch are becoming an exceptionally rare breed.

Right now that must seem like a godsend for Hughes, whose slow start to the season has inevitably drawn criticism.

But when Stoke’s paymasters handed Hughes a brief of improving both playing style and results in summer 2013, scraping wins and draws through the chaos Crouch’s height can cause in the box surely wasn’t what they imagined.

While even the most illustrious sides in the world would benefit from having a direct and physical Plan B for tight situations, giving their worn-down opposition a different kind of problem to overcome, Crouch is fast-becoming much more than Stoke’s Plan B. In fact, their game-plan this season has largely reduced to depending on individual brilliance from Xherdan Shaqiri in the first half and Crouch’s aerial menace in the second.

That’s symptomatic of how the philosophical revolution Hughes was tasked with bringing to the club has steadily soured. Last season saw Stoke average their least possession to date under the Welshman and that number has dropped further to just 44% this term.

Similarly, the Potters’ percentage of goals scored from open play has plummeted from 77% in 2014/15 to just 56% this season, another all-time low under Hughes, while their percentage of long balls has reached an all-time high of 18% - just one percent less than during Pulis’ final season in charge.

Of course, that’s not a consequence of Crouch’s presence alone, although Stoke’s dependence on the veteran striker has inevitably affected the way they’ve attacked this season. But through shape and style, he symbolises how Hughes has found himself turning to tactics, practices and even the players Pulis’ era to steer Stoke away from relegation trouble.

The new contract, in turn, highlights how Stoke have failed to move on; still dependent on not just a striker perfectly befitting of the Pulis style, but also a striker well into his twilight years. That’s an indictment on the club’s transfer policy as well, and Hughes’ failure to make the most of more technical strike talents like Saido Berahino and Bojan.

On the surface, it may seem logical to keep Crouch at the club for another year. He scores goals, he changes games, he provides leadership in the dressing room and he won’t cause unnecessary problems. But in many ways, it also demonstrates a lack of ambition and the abandonment of the plans to make Stoke a truly aesthetic footballing side.

Surely the forward-thinking move would be to replace Crouch with a younger, more modern and more mobile centre-forward. In any case, if Crouch’s new deal isn’t pushing a club that were once on the verge of breaking into the top six further backwards, it’s at the very least keeping them stuck in neutral.

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