After leaving Stoke City in 2013, Tony Pulis was labelled as the manager who was ruining the game with his direct and no-nonsense style of football.
Now though, after managing to help Crystal Palace avoid relegation last season and winning the LMA Manager of the Year award, Pulis’s stock value could not be higher.
Not only did the Welshman save Palace from relegation, they also played attacking football and not the way people would’ve expected. The players he had weren’t superstars and weren’t a team with a huge amount of Premier League experience either.
With Pulis having now left Crystal Palace, surely this will put pressure on other owners and chairmen to look at their managers and question whether they have made the right choice.
Sam Allardyce is currently in that position at West Ham. After losing their first game of the season 1-0 to Tottenham Hotspur, the fans who don’t support Allardyce have now reached breaking point.
I believe Pulis is the right man to take charge of West Ham. He is like Allardyce in the way that he’s a very hands-on manager and very direct with his players, but he will play with a bit more of the attacking style the board are looking for, which is not the style of Allardyce.
Whilst West Ham fans may not be blown away by the though of getting Pulis as manager, West Ham do have the ambition that perhaps Crystal Palace don’t have. The reason why Pulis’s relationship broke down at Palace was apparently due to the lack of signings by chairman Steve Parish.
Could West Ham be the right club for Tony Pulis and vice versa? Most definitely. Time will tell, but one manager who’s stock couldn’t be higher is Pulis.
West Ham can’t hang around too much longer though, otherwise they may miss out on the one man that can not only guarantee West Ham safety in the Premier League, but achieve the tenth placed finish that owners David Gold and David Sullivan have set for the current manager Allardyce.
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