The 2004–05 season was Stoke City's 98th season in the Football League and the 38th in the second tier, it was also the first season in the new re-branded Football League Championship. With supporter expectation now rising there were hopes that Stoke could soon begin to mount a serious attempt to return to the top flight. But after a poor summer in terms of transfer activity those hopes subsided, but soon returned after a good start to the season with Stoke going top of the table in early September. But any hopes of a promotion push soon vanished with some poor performances and most notably a lack of goals being scored. In fact Stoke went on a dull run of 'binary' results, from 23 October 2004 to 22 February 2005 the only score line was that of 0–0, 1–0, 0–1 and 1–1. Supporters began to ve