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Pulis - where did it go wrong


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Now we have a new manager and hopefully new ideas, where did it all go wrong for Pulis.

I read an article the other day on Pulis training and style and it made a lot of sense and maybe highlighted why our time under him went the way it did.

The article talked about him using a gruelling pre season to get the players super fit.... for them to reach their target of points as quick as possible.  I can see why this would work in the premier league as his teams would achieve the magic points total then take their foot off the gas once safe.

When going for promotion though you need to keep it going all season. Could this be why we started well but then trailed off?

 

also listening to Peter Crouch talking about his training methods he spoke about him training the defensive players and midfield in a defensive unit, and the attacking players were left pretty much to train on their own.

 

if this is the case it would explain why we were solid, yet when we got possession seemed to not know what to do between defence and attack.

I was actually optimistic when we appointed Pulis as always liked how honest he seemed in interviews at other clubs. I guess we kind of got that here. 

Heres hoping for a better period under Woodgate

 

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Tbh I think it went wrong in the play off games against Villa. Up until then I think a lot were OK with Pulis coming in and steadying the ship after the Monk mess, however it should have just been for that season. He shouldn't have stayed.

After those two hugely disappointing games a lot finally saw him for what he is; a manager with zero ambition and ability to create a winning team. From there it went massively downhill. Poor recruitment and poor tactics.

The evolution of football has really passed him by in all those years where he's been fighting relegation. He is incapable of adjusting and fans really realised than in the play offs. Gibson should have seen the writing on the wall then and thanked him for his service, but I suppose it would have been expensive to sack him and Pulis probably said all the right things.

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Totally understand reason for this thread as its a good discussion to have and I hope you dont think am being flippant or dismissive about the topic because i am not.

However, I genuinely don't care to waste any more time even thinking about his reign never mind discussing it. That is how bad it was for me. I would rather just put my efforts towards erasing his time here from my memory than analyisng it.

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1 hour ago, Borodane said:

The evolution of football has really passed him by in all those years where he's been fighting relegation. He is incapable of adjusting and fans really realised than in the play offs. Gibson should have seen the writing on the wall then and thanked him for his service, but I suppose it would have been expensive to sack him and Pulis probably said all the right things.

This is more or less it. He either couldn't adapt,or wasn't interested. I think the skills required to know how to manage one of the best teams in the league and also one of the worst teams in the league (after promotion) is a massively underrated skill. It's why Eddie Howe and Sean Dyche are so highly regarded.

Every warning about Pulis before his arrival was proved true. He divided the fanbase, he overrated opposition teams to the point where it felt like we were lining up against the 1970 Brazil team every week, he packed the team with hard workers & dropped the flair players, and as soon as we sold Adama, we were just a terrible team to watch.

Britt, Bamford and Adama pulled his reign up to the level of 'meh' in terms of league finishes. We stunk the playoffs out when we were there, and didn't make any effort to build on that. Replacing Bamford and Adama with Hugill and Saville was partly cost-cutting, of course, but going for those players rather than even vaguely similar ones wrecked any chance of maintaining any momentum that we built up in the last handful of games before the playoffs (where we actually weren't bad).

The fact that it took Fletcher and Wing so long to get into the team after they had done well in the cup games (and Tavernier never really got in at all despite being at least decent every time he made an appearance) is another black mark. What was it that he thought Downing and Saville were doing so well that made them undroppable?

Overall, it went wrong because Pulis will always be Pulis. He is the right man for a job, and this wasn't that job.  

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2 consecutive failed transfer windows, simple.

Style of football aside, he came out at the start of the season and basically said we'd failed to get the players he wanted and would probably struggle to get promoted..

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Simple answer to this thread title was that we employed him. One style that mainly kept teams from going down not going up. Statistics show to get out of this league you need attacking football. Defending and hoping to nick it doesn’t work, especially against other teams who turn up to park the bus. Fans expect a side struggling in the prem to play defensively away at old Trafford but not when you’re one of the favourites in the championship at home to Millwall or Bolton.

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5 hours ago, chickenlunch said:

2 consecutive failed transfer windows, simple.

Style of football aside, he came out at the start of the season and basically said we'd failed to get the players he wanted and would probably struggle to get promoted..

Except it's not really as simple as that is it? He whined about not having wingers for the entire time he was here yet when he was given one in both January windows he didnt play them. And he cited that he didnt want to change his style of play as to the reason he didnt play vlp despite him training well. 

 

Its probably even more simple than the 2 failed windows (which were awful in large part due to Tony's preferred type of players and aversion to width especially in the full back areas) - he didnt know how to adapt his football. And it was woeful 

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5 hours ago, chickenlunch said:

2 consecutive failed transfer windows, simple.

Style of football aside, he came out at the start of the season and basically said we'd failed to get the players he wanted and would probably struggle to get promoted..

And I'm sure that it was great motivation for our already very talented squad to hear that their manager didn't believe in them.

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7 hours ago, chickenlunch said:

2 consecutive failed transfer windows, simple.

Style of football aside, he came out at the start of the season and basically said we'd failed to get the players he wanted and would probably struggle to get promoted..

I think we did fail to get the players he wanted. I think what he wanted was a bit of a fantasy though.

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Can this be changed to where did it all go right? After all we did finish 7th with limited resources and a squad which Pulis himself said wasn’t good enough to go up

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