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Aug 11 - Stoke City midfielder Charlie Adam is excited by the squad's increased potential and believes they can make a genuine bid to qualify for European football.
Stoke, who have never finished highest than ninth, lost their opening game of the season 1-0 to Liverpool on Sunday when new signings Ibrahim Afellay, Glen Johnson and Marco van Ginkel made their debut for the club.
"The ambition is to try to get into Europe," Adam told the British media.
"That would be a massive achievement. Liverpool was only one game, there are 37 more to go. We want to get into Europe, we want to taste it and that would be a step forward for us," said the Scotland international.
"It is a good club that is moving forward and the next step for us is to get in Europe, if we can. It is going to be difficult, with the teams around us, but we look forward to the challenge," the 29-year-old, who signed a one-year contract extension this summer, said.
Adam was full of praise for Afellay, who was signed from Barcelona and made an encouraging start to life in the Premier League.
"You can see the ability (Afellay) has. You don't play for Barcelona if you're a bad player. He likes to keep the ball and has good retention of it," Adam said.
"Also, he has only been in the club a couple of weeks and not had much of a pre-season.
"Once he gets up to speed again and everybody gets to know how each other play we will be a decent team again this year," he added.
