SOCCER ANGLES:The Stoke City manager has something, and it's not just a sergeant major's bark, writes MICHAEL WALKER
THERE ARE times when it is easy to dislike Stoke City. There are times when players such as Robert Huth are slyly tugging jerseys – or worse, times when Stoke go over the line of so-called gamesmanship. There are times when they are long-ball and long-throw, when the physicality of their style exceeds skill.
But it doesn’t half work. And that is only half of their story. Stoke host Manchester United this evening on the back of a 4-0 defeat at Sunderland but so established are Stoke in the Premier League it is easy to forget they were losing to the likes of Preston and Crystal Palace in the Championship three and a half years ago. But they secured promotion behind West Brom.
Tony Pulis had been appointed around 18 months before that – his second stint as manager – and has displayed to a wider public than before the disciplined relentlessness that Alex Ferguson must recognise every time the pair shake hands.
Pulis has pushed Stoke to a point where they faced Sunderland having travelled back from a midweek European game against Dynamo Kiev. “Midweek European game” – that is the sort of phrase they probably did not even dream of in the Potteries five years ago.
With chairman Peter Coates heeding the lesson of sustained investment, Stoke have been able to recruit Peter Crouch in August, and Wilson Palacios, both from Spurs. They took Kenwyne Jones from Sunderland before that. The club has big money.
That’s a trio of players with a physical dimension. That description in turn plays to Pulis’s detractors. Yet the Welshman from Newport has also brought in ball players, Matthew Etherington and Jermaine Pennant. Neither has a reputation for unfettered aggression.
Yet both did have reputations – Etherington was a gambler. He reckons he squandered €1.7 million on horses and cards. He would have been an easy character to avoid. Pulis signed him for €2.3 million from West Ham two and a half years ago and Etherington has been consistently good since. He has given Stoke something extra.
Pennant is another who some managers would have crossed the street not to sign. Pulis went the other way. Pennant once had to play while electronically tagged by police following a conviction for drink-driving. He was an in-and-out success at Liverpool but ended up strolling away from Real Zaragoza via Portsmouth. Yet Pennant has been resuscitated at Stoke. The same may happen to Jonathan Woodgate.
Pulis has something, and it’s not just a sergeant major’s bark. It’s cuteness. He’s been a manager for 19 years and never had a team relegated. Under Sam Allardyce, Bolton were a contrast. They would always be accused of roughness, sometimes justified, yet Allardyce had Ivan Campo and Jay-Jay Okocha in the team. Gary Speed used to talk of Bolton’s yoga and Pilates classes.
Pulis fines players for missing Pilates at Stoke. Yet he believes in the return of a form of National Service. He is both old-school and new-school, but it was the old bit that appealed last Sunday in Sunderland.
Players and staff do tire from European games in midweek, David Moyes mentioned recently Everton returning from Ukraine at 5am on a Friday then losing a lunchtime kick-off the following Sunday.
Ferguson’s reaction to this season’s Champions League draw was to salute the travel simplicity of Basle in Switzerland and Benfica in Lisbon. He was even pleased with the trip to Romania because Otelul Galati will switch their game to the national stadium in Bucharest. Travel was the first thing Ferguson talked about.
Stoke came back from Kiev last Friday morning. They had drawn 1-1 with Dynamo in the first of their Europa League group games. Then they had to get up to Wearside for Saturday night. All the while down in Pulis’s native south Wales, miners were trapped down a pit. Four miners died.
Pulis grew up in Newport, and took Stoke there this pre-season to play County and the local YMCA. Tomorrow week, he will lead his players down to Swansea City. He is as Welsh as Gareth Edwards.
After conceding four at Sunderland Pulis was asked about the trip to and from Kiev, its part in the result. Pulis replied: “We live in a bubble in football. Those poor miners go underground and have to work very, very hard for their families. They earn in a year what some of our guys earn in a week. There’s no way we’ll make excuses for travelling and then producing a poor performance.”
Even if deep down Pulis knew there was an element of weariness in an untypically Stoke display, he was not going to say so, not last weekend.
Even if deep down Pulis knows that he is fighting a losing battle when it comes to real life intruding on the bubble, at least he is still fighting.
It was good to hear, made you like him that bit more. And his team.
Dalglish wears his humour on his Coats
AT BRIGHTON'S new ground the other night, Liverpool manager Kenny Dalglish was being asked about Steven Gerrard's welcome return from injury having been out since March. Predictably Dalglish was delighted with Gerrard's galvanising presence.
Also predictably, Dalglish was in spiky humour. He brought up the name of Sebastien Coates, the Uruguayan centre-half who was mainly assured, part-shaky in Brighton. Dalglish pronounced his name "Coats" with a small twinkle in his eye. "Or Coat-ez," he added. "If you're Spanish."
Coats it is, then.
URUGUAY'S GROWING stature in English football could be seen in Coates joining Luis Suarez at Anfield. In Brighton they were met by one of the most promising managers in England, Gus Poyet, another Uruguayan.
Brighton sped through League One last season and are seemingly intent on copying Norwich City by ploughing on through the Championship in one season. Last night they missed the chance to go top when playing out a 3-3 home draw with Leeds United. Brighton lost that top spot last Saturday at Leicester City. It was Poyet's team's first league loss of the season. In defeat, though, Brighton showed the flowing passing style that has earned them such praise. But for a Fernando Torres-style open-goal miss by Craig Mackail-Smith it could have finished 1-1, not 1-0.
Brighton are going places. Even if their new stadium is named after a credit card, it symbolises the club's return. Liverpool and Leeds have visited and, next Tuesday, Crystal Palace are in Brighton. Brighton and Palace are separated by over 40 miles but they really dislike each other. This is their derby, the first for six years. Brighton are back on football's map.
