[aries22]

I've read through all the comments on this thread. Correct me if I'm wrong, but no one has ever called Tony Pulis the Messiah, and no one has ever said he will guarantee us our PL safety.

For the all the Pulis critics, I have two questions: 1. would you have kept Alan Irvine, and 2. if not, who else would you have appointed at the time?

I championed Pulis's appointment back in August on JA606 when he left Palace, and I did so on two grounds: 1. Alan Irvine was out of his depth in the PL, and 2. Pulis knows, or I believe he knows, how to get the best out of a squad.

He's made mistakes, such as bringing Olsson on against Leicester, but show me a PL manager, apart from maybe Mourinho, who hasn't made mistakes. Both Pulis and Alan Irvine inherited a squad of players they both saw had deficiencies in it - the left backs, the right backs. You don't seriously believe do you that Pulis plays four CBs simply because he prefers big lads at the back? He's got to be doing it because he doesn't think the LBs and RBs are good enough. That points us towards Terry Burton and Mervyn Day, Day to a lesser extent, because he arrived at the club after we had made our summer acquisitions. But I can't see what difference either man has made to the successful running of our club, and that's a question I'd love to put to both of them and Jeremy Peace.

The last two home defeats have been weekend ruiners, and it remains to be seen whether they cost us our PL status. In my opinion, we are in trouble, and we've got to get something from Palace or Newcastle, but I bet the bottom three teams, who are 7 and 8 points behind us, would happily swap places with us.