From Martin Smith
The problem for TP, though, was that his journey just seemed to be running out of steam.
The board had backed him royally, making Stoke City was one of the highest net-spenders in the Premier League, but the continued progress just wasn't there.
Pulis talked often about "pushing on", but never really seemed to show any indication that he was prepared to do that.
Regardless of how much money we spent the way we played seemed to be locked in, and the better quality players we did sign were expected to fit into what we already had, rather than having things built around them.
In the past two seasons we also seemed to lose a sense of who we were, and despite the sizeable amount of money being spent our ambition, from the manager's point of view, seemed to be about no more than earning 40 points.
On top of that, the quality of the football simply did not reflect the amount of money we had spent on assembling our squad, and neither did the lack of options we had in certain positions.
We had a reputation as being the most unentertaining team to watch in the top flight, and so many different statistics sadly backed that up.
In my own mind, I feel that the board probably came to the decision that TP would keep us up all right, but at a large cost each season, and without too much use of the youth or academy system.
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