Swansea eyeing firefighter Pulis

TONY PULIS is the leading contender to take over at Swansea City if the board lose patience with manager Paul Clement. Clement’s future is not dependent on winning at home against Bournemouth today, but Pulis’s record of never having been relegated as a manager is attractive to Swansea. The Swans are the only club in the bottom five not to have had a change of leadership this season, and defeat today would be a fifth consecutive loss. They have also lost five of their six home League matches so far in this campaign. Pulis, 59, was sacked by West Brom on Monday. Clement called on his players to be ‘mentally tough’ in coping with the increasingly fraught atmosphere at home. ‘The owners are very supportive of my position here,’ he insisted. ‘You have to be mentally tough when you are not playing so well and you make a mistake and the crowd turn a little bit. How they deal with it is an important part of being mentally tough.’