People think I’m a dinosaur ... but I’m far from extinct
He could be manager of the season – and he may even have helped Real Madrid into the Champions League f inal – so what’s Tony Pulis’s secret?
TONY PULIS was sitting on the sofa of his Bournemouth home watching Real Madrid dismantle Bayern Munich when his phone buzzed. Carlo Ancelotti’s team had just scored the third of their four goals while dismantling the European champions with a mixture of solid defending, carefully rehearsed set-pieces and breaks at speed down the flanks.
‘It was a text from one of my old Stoke players,’ says the Crystal Palace manager with obvious pride. ‘It said, “Gaffer, they are doing the same as we did”, and then there was a big smiley face and the one word “Perception” with three exclamation marks.’
Perception is a big word for Pulis. If his team can bring Liverpool’s title challenge to an end at Selhurst Park tomorrow night it might well be enough for him to be perceived ahead of Brendan Rodgers as Manager of the Year.
That would be some triumph for a man who was written off 12 months earlier as a football dinosaur, when his seven years at Stoke were brought to a shuddering halt. He had gone into an end-of-season meeting to discuss his plans to take forward the club he had lifted into European competition from the depths of the Championship. Instead, he was told he was no longer wanted and they were seeking a change of style.
‘People, especially in this country, are big on perception and I think you do get pigeonholed,’ says the 56-year-old. ‘I am not what people think I am. That doesn’t worry me because I get on with my job. My view is you play to what strengths you’ve got, and you do the best you can with that.
‘It hurt in some respects when it was over at Stoke but I am a very pragmatic person. I have been in football a long time and understand there is always stuff that will go your way and stuff that won’t.
‘The great thing was it was clean. There wasn’t a jagged, messy affair. The way Peter and John Coates handled it was class.’
SINCE taking charge of Palace at the end of November he has restored his reputation, taking a side with average players who were bottom, six points adrift of safety, to enter the last week of the season with a chance of finishing in the top half. It keeps his record of having never been relegated in 22 years and 920 games as a manager.
Rodgers tried to have a dart at him after Chelsea had derailed the Anfield title train last Sunday, sneering that Jose Mourinho’s tactics were ‘a good preparation for how Palace play with lots of long balls, long throws, and players behind the ball’. Pulis meets that question with a dead bat. ‘I think Brendan was at the Everton game and we got so many plaudits that night for the way we played, and I don’t think we used one long throw,’ he says. ‘I’ll speak to him when he comes in and find out where he got those quotes from.’
Pulis would not say it himself but if he ever got Steven Gerrard, Luis Suarez and Daniel Sturridge in his squad he might also get them passing and moving with the freedom Liverpool have shown this season.
‘Our clubs are poles apart. Liverpool spent more than £100million when Kenny Dalglish was there, and then Brendan has come in and spent nearly the same again, so they have a good group of players. I still think Brendan has done a wonderful job. They have been helped that they have been able to prepare for games without Europe, but even so.
‘Where you do have to give Liverpool a lot of credit is that Brendan finished seventh last year. Some managers at top clubs would not have survived but they’ve been rewarded massively for sticking by him.’
That is a moot point from a man who was sacked for finishing 13th with Stoke. It was why taking over Palace was such a big risk.
‘If you say I was being thought of as a dinosaur, then choosing the wrong next job I’d risk being extinct. That’s about right. The thing that worried me most when I came in was that there was a resignation that we were going down. That was from the top of the club to the bottom. We had to clear out that perception. The thing that helped most was the supporters. Win lose or draw they were wonderful, and we bought into that.’
PULIS also pays credit to the managerial regime he replaced. ‘The other saving grace — and I have to give Dougie Freedman, Lennie Lawrence and Ian Holloway some credit for this — is that there was a group of players at the club who were real strong characters and good pros,’ he says. ‘[Julian] Speroni has been an absolute dream, [Danny] Gabbidon, Delaney, Jedinak, [Glenn] Murray, all real solid players. Yes, I’ve got rid of quite a few, but I could fall back on a little group.
‘Were they Premier League players? That’s a different question. But they were a group that wanted to work and knuckle down and were desperate to be successful for Crystal Palace Football Club.’
He has won over the fans, just as he did at Stoke. ‘I left on real good terms. Peter and his family are coming to my daughter’s wedding this year and I’m happy for people to know that.
‘The amount of letters and support I had; cards that came to my house. Week after week they were arriving. My wife, Debs, has kept every one of them. The postman kept stopping and saying, “Here’s another load”, and the next day “Here’s another”. Some letters were just addressed to Tony Pulis, care of Bournemouth. They came from all over the world. You sit back and you say that, really, we didn’t do too bad.’
Then again, they set the blueprint for Real Madrid. It’s a case of perception, you see.