1963–64 Stoke City F.C. season
season of football team
The 1963–64 season was Stoke City's 57th season in the Football League and the 33rd in the First Division.
With the club now on a high after gaining promotion back to England's top tier, Tony Waddington wasted no time in bringing in new signings to make sure relegation was avoided. He broke the transfer record and despite some concern during the season Stoke stayed up comfortably in 17th position. Stoke enjoyed success in the League Cup reaching the final against Leicester City before losing 4–3 over two legs.
Season review
League
With the euphoria of winning promotion over, Waddington knew that his side had to be strengthened to have any hope of surviving in the First Division. The first big name signing he made was that of Peter Dobing for a club record fee of £37,500 from Manchester City and £6,000 for Bobby Irvine a young goalkeeper from Linfield. Also signed by Stoke this season was John Ritchie a centre forward signed from non-league Kettering Town for a small fee of £2,500. Ritchie scored 30 goals in his first season and went on to become Stoke's best ever goalscorer.
Stoke made a dream start to the 1963–64 season beating Tottenham Hotspur 2–1 at home on the opening match of the season, Jimmy McIlroy scoring both goals, and then accounting for Aston Villa 3–1 two days later. There followed though, a run of 10 matches without a win and Stoke found themselves at the wrong end of the table.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “1963–64 Stoke City F.C. season” is season of football team. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Stoke, City and season, not as a finished interpretation.
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This entry incorporates text from “1963–64 Stoke City F.C. season” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.