01-10-2015, 14:54
Tony Pulis is a manager with both strengths and flaws.
He is brilliant at defensive organisation and getting the best out of poor players.
When he's given a bit of money to spend, he's very hit and miss.
I think he was the perfect appointment to keep us up when Irvine left because our squad was pretty awful and our main priority had to be staying up. Frankly, with the new TV Deal, dropping out of the Prem simply wasn't an option and as a fan, neither was watching the likes of MK Dons etc. Tony inherited a team that couldn't buy a win at home against anyone and guided us to beat Southampton, Swansea, Chelsea and put in our best performance of the season in the 4-0 win against West Ham in the cup. A pretty much identical West Ham team that beat us at our place in the league under Irvine's regime. Darren Fletcher was signed and provided some much needed energy in the middle of the park and was the driving force behind us actually managing to attack at home. In my opinion, finishing 14th with that side was a huge success.
However, this season, we seem to be pretty much at the same level despite spending a bucket load of cash. That exposes Tony's main flaw - when given money, he's a bit of a kid in a sweet shop. I also feel he's a bit deluded about our spending power - his interviews suggest that he expected 3-4 more players to come in. Despite that, he needs to be savvy enough to realise that we're not big enough to be spending £5m, £8m and the like on 'squad players'.
I personally don't think we'll go down with Pulis in charge and even when we lose, we do seem to show a decent amount of commitment. However, there's no denying that we're never going to play sexy football regardless of how much cash he spends (The football was horrendous under Irvine too). Personally, as a purist, I'd have liked to see us bring Pulis in short term and then transition to a more 'footballing' manager like Laudrup or Flores in the summer. But with huge money coming from TV now, I think Peace has taken what he feels is the 'safest' option to just keep us in the league by keeping Pulis long term.
Hopefully that transition happens at some point in the future, because we don't want to watch this football forever. But we shouldn't lose sight of the position we were in when Pulis joined and the job he was pulled in for. Yes, there's a lot to be critical of this season, but he did an effective job last year.
He is brilliant at defensive organisation and getting the best out of poor players.
When he's given a bit of money to spend, he's very hit and miss.
I think he was the perfect appointment to keep us up when Irvine left because our squad was pretty awful and our main priority had to be staying up. Frankly, with the new TV Deal, dropping out of the Prem simply wasn't an option and as a fan, neither was watching the likes of MK Dons etc. Tony inherited a team that couldn't buy a win at home against anyone and guided us to beat Southampton, Swansea, Chelsea and put in our best performance of the season in the 4-0 win against West Ham in the cup. A pretty much identical West Ham team that beat us at our place in the league under Irvine's regime. Darren Fletcher was signed and provided some much needed energy in the middle of the park and was the driving force behind us actually managing to attack at home. In my opinion, finishing 14th with that side was a huge success.
However, this season, we seem to be pretty much at the same level despite spending a bucket load of cash. That exposes Tony's main flaw - when given money, he's a bit of a kid in a sweet shop. I also feel he's a bit deluded about our spending power - his interviews suggest that he expected 3-4 more players to come in. Despite that, he needs to be savvy enough to realise that we're not big enough to be spending £5m, £8m and the like on 'squad players'.
I personally don't think we'll go down with Pulis in charge and even when we lose, we do seem to show a decent amount of commitment. However, there's no denying that we're never going to play sexy football regardless of how much cash he spends (The football was horrendous under Irvine too). Personally, as a purist, I'd have liked to see us bring Pulis in short term and then transition to a more 'footballing' manager like Laudrup or Flores in the summer. But with huge money coming from TV now, I think Peace has taken what he feels is the 'safest' option to just keep us in the league by keeping Pulis long term.
Hopefully that transition happens at some point in the future, because we don't want to watch this football forever. But we shouldn't lose sight of the position we were in when Pulis joined and the job he was pulled in for. Yes, there's a lot to be critical of this season, but he did an effective job last year.