We can turn on style now Pulis is gone — Foster

Ben Foster admits the time was right for tony Pulis to leave West Bromwich Albion and free the talent of the most gifted squad he has seen in his eight years at the Hawthorns. ‘He is almost a victim of his own success,’ said Foster, who arrived initially on loan from Birmingham in 2011 and has played for five Albion managers and three caretakers. ‘everybody knows the tony Pulis style of football and now we have technically gifted players who want to get the ball down and show what they can do. It’s not necessarily what tony wanted, to be honest. ‘this is definitely the most technically gifted West Brom team in my time. Look at the bench, with (Grzegorz) Krychowiak, a PsG player with bundles of quality, and young sam Field, a really good technical player, starting in front of him. ‘they’ve always been known as hard-working grinders. It is nice to give players a break from just getting the ball forward and getting up behind it. ‘It’s a shame but it was time for a change. that’s what it was, really, and you could sense it at spurs where the fans were out in numbers and there was a good atmosphere. ‘It’s time now for us to show we are good players who should not be in the position we are.’ Pulis was fired last week following a 4-0 defeat at home by Chelsea, having been in charge for almost three years. ‘I’ll always speak very highly of tony,’ said 34-year-old Foster. ‘He’s a great guy, and as soon as he got the sack I sent him a message to thank him very much for what he’d done for me and the whole club. It has come on in leaps and bounds. He has built the best team.’ Gary Megson took temporary charge and inspired the team to a 1-1 draw at tottenham on saturday. ‘to be fair, he didn’t want to change things too drastically,’ said Foster. ‘He just said, “I want you to play a little bit more football, basically just get 20 yards further forward”. We’d got stuck into a rut of sitting back and waiting for the inevitable.’ Alan Pardew is the favourite to take over. Megson does not expect to be part of West Brom’s future but would like to stay in football after ending five years in exile when summoned by Pulis to replace his assistant manager David Kemp in the summer. ‘Coming back into football has whetted my appetite a bit,’ said 58-year-old Megson. ‘I’m certainly a lot more enthusiastic to get back into management. ‘the last game I took charge of was sheffield Wednesday against sheffield United at Hillsborough. We won 1-0 and I got sacked on the Wednesday.’