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Stoke City today announced they will be parting ways with Tony Pulis, and not a moment too soon. Stoke could not possibly improve with Pulis at the helm and in fact that he has been there so long was actually turning in to a negative. Sure, when he arrived they were at the lower end of the Championship and he leaves them after a good strong run in the lower half of the Premier League. His time even includes an FA Cup final appearance. That’s all very good and is a solid achievement certainly. But there are many factors that mean that this isn’t as impressive as it looks:
Net Spend and Transfer Market inefficiency
Tony Pulis has a net spend of circa £100m. £100m, at Stoke. That is higher than Arsenal and Spurs in that period! Think about that. And Everton, West Brom, Swansea, West Ham etc. Now, there is no doubt that he has made some excellent signings that have formed the bedrock of a solid unit. Begovic, Shawcross, Huth and Walters were all signed for less than £5m and have played a stack of games for the club. There have been many other defenders who have been signed that have contributed well. He can certainly buy a defender. But what he can’t buy, is attackers or midfielders and in his time at the club only Begovic and Shawcross have gained in value.
Palacios cost £8m, Adam £4m, Jones £8, Crouch £8m, Tonge £3m and Jerome £3m. All high ticket items for a club like Stoke, and all have lost value appreciably. They’ve contributed modestly on the field. He buys high, mostly because he places an absolute premium on buying from England, and sells very low. He hasn’t bought from overseas with any success. He spends a lot of money every season for no appreciable progress.
Stuck in lower mid-table
Below are Stoke’s year on year returns in the Premier league under Tony Pulis:
2008/09 – 12th, 45 points, 38 goals2009/10 – 11th, 47 points, 34 goals2010/11 – 13th, 46 points, 46 goals2011/12 – 14th, 45 points, 36 goals2012/13 – 13th, 42 points, 34 goals
Notice a certain pattern emerging? When you also consider that the net spend each summer averages out at £20m plus, it’s easy to see that he has taken them as far as he can. Only once have they even scored more than a goal a game.
Tactical Inflexibility and defensive mindset
Pulis’ side gained their ‘rugby team’ status because of their reputation for long ball play and a reliance on set pieces. And it is justified. Sometimes these kinds of things are exaggerated but the team’s almost paralysing fear of making a mistake near their goal and the low risk style that Pulis emphasised was fine for the first year or so as they established themselves, but they’re still doing it 5 years on. Now, as Pulis will tell you, possession stats don’t mean a lot. Certainly not team possession. But in terms of individual distribution stats, and certainly accuracy stats, you can tell a lot. Even Stoke’s better passers rarely topped 70% accuracy and the number of direct balls was always near the most in the league.
Going direct is not in itself a bad thing by any means. West Ham, West Brom and even Everton found success this year with a direct style. But it was a controlled direct style. If you play a long pass, you are inherently lowering your chances of completing the pass. If you don’t have the ball, you can’t score. And that is why Stoke had such measly returns in front of goal. If it gets to the point, as it did this year, where you are bemoaning a lack of goals from the big lads in defence, you know that there is an endemic problem.
This season, he has spurned the wing pairing of Etherington and Pennant, the two that played when Stoke scored their most goals, and mostly had right back Ryan Shotton and the hard running but hugely technically limited Jon Walters out wide. Neither offered penetration. He tried a switch away from the 442 he so treasured to play a modern 4231. Except he didn’t. Adam can’t play far enough forward to be part of a three behind a striker. Walters is a wide man in a 442 and Shotton is a full back. It was a pure 451.
Who is creating anything? He has tried creators in the past – Tuncay and Gudjohnsen – but then binned them for harder workers. Pulis set his team out to avoid losing, which suited them fine when they actually were underdogs, but he couldn’t escape that mindset. Part of the reason for this is that what was initially used as motivation for the players became deeply rooted in the psyche of the club. The ‘us against the world’ mindset served them well initially, but eventually it became an excuse for failure and a justification for not changing.
‘They’re all out to get us’
It’s almost as if Pulis didn’t want to change because he thought it would prove his critics right. They said his team were anti-football, that he just signed big cloggers, he needed to change. He must have thought; ‘I’ll show you’ and became increasingly obsessed by this idea that he was being victimised. After every game he complained about the referee, he complained about diving opponents, he complained about evil foreigners. But never once did he say ‘you know what, we keep just smashing it to the other team and losing. Should I change that?’. He didn’t, or couldn’t, because it would show that he was wrong. In the end, his stubbornness on the issue cost him his job.
Buying the wrong players
The problem was his recruitment policy didn’t allow him to change his tactics. He kept buying the same sort of player. This summer, he bought Charlie Adam to be his ‘number 10?. But Adam is not an efficient passer, he is just as likely to ping the ball in to the stands as to a striker. Not to mention that when he had his greatest success at Blackpool, it was feeding balls in to quick forwards who had the pace to hunt them down. Blackpool also played with width and tempo which meant he had much more space to utilise and more moving options to pick out. At Stoke, he played in a very direct side with precious little movement. Why sign a ball spraying midfielder when you have a choice of Peter Crouch or Kenwyne Jones up front? Also, he’s never been a number 10 in his life. He needs to play deep and with time due to his slow footwork. He isn’t subtle enough to play intricately around the box and isn’t precise enough to use a target man.
He also signed Steven N’Zonzi, not in itself a bad move, but he already had Whitehead, Whelan and so on in that spot. Why bother? He signed Geoff Cameron, a limited defensive full back. He already had Shotton and (shudder) Wilkinson. He bought Michael Kightly when he already had Etherington, Pennant and Walters, basically the same type of player.
Stoke City are completely justified in parting ways with Tony Pulis. He became too entrenched in trying to prove that his way would work and the idea that he was somehow being victimised, that he failed to progress the club tactically or in giving them a more positive mindset. He spent more money than West Brom, Everton, Swansea, West Ham, Newcastle, Norwich and, believe it or not, Arsenal, and yet played worse football than all of them in achieving less. It is time to go.
