Pulis: I actually enjoy living in Jurassic Park
The veteran manager tells John Percy the game has become too quick in writing off ‘dinosaurs’ ‘Boro took a lot out of me. It needs to be the right job’
It is a sunny September afternoon and Tony Pulis finds himself in an unusual position; the football season has started and he has not been patrolling a technical area in his trademark baseball cap and famous ice-white trainers. Pulis has taken charge of 1,127 games, stretching back to 1992, so this is a rare break as he reflects over lunch in a Soho restaurant on a variety of subjects, including video assistant referees, Michael Owen, Brexit and social media.
After leaving Middlesbrough in May, he is enjoying the free time with his family, but there is the distinct impression Pulis is waiting for the right time to re-enter the madhouse of management.
“When the season starts, you’re looking at things you’d be doing and you do miss the crazy existence us managers have,” he says. “Pre-season, you always get pangs because you know the lads are back and you want to be involved. It’s a life that has obviously extended far beyond my imagination. It’s the first break I’ve had for a while and I’ve enjoyed it. I’ve had time at home, a couple of family holidays and I’ve seen Ant [his son, who is establishing a fine reputation as the head coach of St Louis FC in the second tier of American soccer] in the US with the children. You do miss it, but I won’t be diving straight back in.”
There have been opportunities, so far resisted. “I had an offer to manage in China shortly after I left Boro but that was far too quick for me to get back in. I’ve been asked if I’d be interested in taking over national teams. I’ve also had one or two approaches in the Championship, but I felt they were too soon. Middlesbrough took a lot out of me, it was enjoyable but draining. It needs to be the right opportunity.”
Pulis had 18 months on Teesside, working under budget restrictions as chairman Steve Gibson moved to lower costs following Boro’s failure to make a quick return to the Premier League. In the 68 Championship games Pulis managed, Boro spent 49 of them in the top six, but he left shortly after missing out on the play-offs by one point last season.
“The people who matter know the job I did,” he says. “Steve is a fantastic man – I went to his wedding this summer – and he laid an enormous amount of money out to get the club promoted and trusted the manager before me to do it. And it didn’t work.
“In football, if you don’t spend the money well enough it comes back to bite you over not one season, but two or three. There was a turnover of 32 players and we brought in over £50 million [through the sales of Adama Traore, Ben Gibson, Patrick
Bamford, Adam Forshaw and Cyrus Christie], and it was tough. You’ve seen the situations at Bury and Bolton, people have to understand that clubs have to be run in a proper manner. If you look at the Championship clubs over the past two seasons, and take Boro and Swansea as examples, both clubs have had to cut their cloths accordingly after relegation and sold players for big money, which has left them with smaller squads but tighter-knit groups.”
Pulis will be 62 in January and bristles at the notion that modern football could be moving away from the veteran manager. Those jibes about being a “dinosaur” playing prehistoric football have been thrown his way for some time. “I actually enjoy living in Jurassic Park! We push experience aside and forget about people far too quickly. People mark you down as a person who’s been in it too long and taken too many punches,” he says. “Age is just a number. For 18 months at Boro, I was the first one in at training and one of the last out. I look at people like Manuel Pellegrini and Marcelo Bielsa and think they all have something to offer.”
Pulis still does, too. He remains an influence to the modern manager, speaking to Sheffield United’s Chris Wilder and Brighton’s Graham Potter last month as they prepared for their first seasons in the top flight.
At weekends, he is filling the time on match days by working for BBC radio, something he enjoys, and he is still a familiar face in football: at our meeting in London, he was stopped outside a hotel by a young Stoke fan who politely asked “are you Tony Pulis?” before thanking him for the memories. Though he has since managed at Crystal Palace – where he was named Premier League manager of the year in 2014 – West Brom and Boro, it is those stirring days in the Potteries over his second spell where his reputation rose. He reels off many of the astute signings he made, such as Ricardo Fuller, Peter Crouch, Jon Walters and Ryan Shawcross. Pulis also had “tearaways and scallywags”, many of whom he rehabilitated, and fond memories of big characters such as Michael Duberry, John Eustace