just got home from celebrating another amazing performance and another three points to our total. but i got to thinking about pulis and what he has done at stoke. i know they've been here for a while and i've heard all his bitching about unfair treatment from refs and that they deserve more from games. but i didn't see them trying to play any kind of football today. all they did was try to stop us from playing football. i know they had a few good chances but every team is going to get that. what they did was take the game to the limit and push a week minded ref and female linesman to the point where tackling a player by wrapping both your legs around his waste and having to disentangle yourself from him so that you can get up is only a yellow card. now if his studs weren't up, the torres tackle last week was perfectly clean and should be actively encouraged. we know that stoke are a physical side but these tactics come from pulis himself. he's the one who tells them how to play. i believe he's not into playing football. he's into deception. deceiving his players that this is any kind of football. deceiving the board that this is how football should be played. and this is the only way to take the club forward and keep it in this league. and deceiving the fans that pay a percentage of his wages that this is the only way to keep this great club that they support out of the lower leagues. i kinda felt sorry for him when he started his bitching a while back. it all seamed to be about the big club, little club syndrome. so it struck a chord with me as a fan of a small club. but to be honest, i never payed much attention to the prem when we weren't in it. so if this was how they played against other teams, they got everything they deserved. i'm sorry stoke but he's a fake. all they did today was try to spoil our football. they failed and football won the day.
I have to agree - it's horrible to watch but despite what some Stoke fans were saying on the match thread I thought it was a superb performance from us today - not in our usual style, but strong and resilient. The second half seemed to last for about 2 days, but we got there
We dug in today and were totally committed to the cause ,some very poor decsions today and weak reffering could have cost us .After reading how Stoke had brought some finnese into their style of play I was expecting more of a footballing exhibition than long balls etc but what what we witnessed today makes me realise what a talented squad of players we have (most) and at a fraction of the monies spent else where.There's a lot to be said for team spirit and that came through today
I couldn't agree more. I thought they were dirtiest team I've seen us play in a long long time. Crouch should have gone and also the guy who tried to decapitate Dyer. Along with the foul on Sinclair in the second half they on another day could have finished the game with 8 men ! I thought we defended well today and some of those players grew into Premier League players today. They withstood the barrage thrown at them and I for one was really proud of them all today. As for Tony Pulis, what a sore loser he is. Not only did we win today but so did football.
We never play our best style away from home. Pulis just sets the side up to try and draw 0-0 away from home. At home lately we've played some really lovely stuff, we made Man United look ordinary at times last week. Please don't judge us on our away performances, as I said above our away football is always awful to watch, at home we are often good to watch.
Loughor Jack, you make some valid points regarding Tony Pulis, some one eyed comments from him in his interview, and if he's complaining against the officials, then he should have had two players sent off, but I'm sure he wouldn't see that either, but there you go, football won at the end of the day, and we took everything they could throw at us, our defending was terrific, both Monk and Williams were great, as was Taylor, and Rangel, happy days and another three points bagged, no way did Stoke deserve any share of the spoils!.................. please log in to view this image
Pulis always does an interview like that when we lose. He'd much rather moan about something else than admit we were utter ****e on the day.
To be fair to Stoke hey did play some good football against utd last week, which begs the question of why change something that works when you play away ? We play the same way no matter where we play, gaining a win away is worth 3 draws if we lose two and win one you get the same points. Don't understand the logic of playing for a draw, play to win every game especially in the league where your bread and butter is. as for a dirty team they were today as bad as the qpr rugby team that broke dorus's jaw a couple of seasons ago, except that they had a few shots on goal, and we didn't have tatey in goal lol
Thats what suprised me today, you have the players that are capable of matching the likes of utd but doesn't Pullis have the confidence in a, him self b, his players to be able to replicate that away from home,?
Why Pulis has this philosophy away from home I'm not sure many Stoke fans could say. Could be a matter of trust, that Pulis doesn't trust the players to do the job, could be that Pulis is too frightened of being beaten heavily so just settles for small defeats. Whatever the reason, our attendances away from home will drop as a result. Our away following is starting to drop and it's not surprising. If Pulis really cared about the supporters, as he says he does, then he'd address the away form problem and do something about it!! Our performances away from home go a long way to explaining why Pulis isn't liked by all Stoke fans.
One thing I'm sure it's not is a belief in himself. One thing Pulis doesn't lack, as much as I love what he's done for the club, is a bit of a big ego.
With the players he has at his disposal he should have come to the Liberty for three points. All Stoke did was lump it up to Crouch. Fair play to the Swans, we had to deal with a physical team, we dealt with it and played some football to win the match.
you have to give pulis credit for the way he has made stoke a regular premiership team and you can safetly say he will keep them there this season. on the whole he is a dedicated manager who hates to lose and wont admit his failings just like a few other managers do. IE..fergy,jones when he was at cardiff and closer to home in martinez with wigan,.I listened to stoke's game last week in the European game and they were fantastic and deserved their win but today he got his tactics wrong and that surprised me with him knowing so much about us, He is a good manager it was just a bad day at the office where he definitely got his game plan wrong and fair play to Brendan he got it right. Stoke are a big team in more ways than one they made some of our players look like dwarfs and when we started passing the ball some of the stoke players got frustrated and self discipline went out the window and with it any chance of getting anything out of the game. they played good football in patches and only if they had kept their discipline they may have got something, so tony needs to address this problem and I'm sure with the big players they have will soon be winning away from home, i wish stoke the best of luck for the season except of course when we come to your patch......
In fairness to some of the stoke fans they did say that they play zero football away from home , i have total respect for their travelling fans there is no way i could follow that type of clogging football away from home ,it would be soul destroying, at their own place they are a different kettle of fish though. The ref was total crap! wish we had the same ref that we had against scunny in the carling cup that time !! we finished with 7 that night if he had been in charge today stoke would have finished with about 5
I heard about some of our challenges. Sounds like Wilkinson's was a shocker. That's the worst part of his game. On his day the lad is a really good player but his tackling does let him down. It's not particularly dirtiness really but he always aims to go in strong and sometimes it doesn't come off right.
Pulis is a brilliant football manager. You may not agree with some of his tactics and approach to certain games but so far they seem to work...Promotion, stay up, FA Cup Final then what looks like turning into a very good European campaign. If Stoke play against a team like us and arsenal for example (teams who like to pass it around on the deck), away from home, and his tactics are to stop them playing football but he has built a squad that is very versatile. They can play that way but can play a very wide game, narrow game, counter etc etc depending on opponents and whether they are home or not. This is evident by last weekend they were unlucky not to take all 3 points against Man U but didnt play an overly physical game there and had a very good win against Besiktas in the Europa League in the week.
Gooner in peace Stoke are ridiculous. Wilkinson should have been given a straight red for nearly killing Dyer, and their brand of football is a bad advert for the PL, and they have the cheek to suggest you don't play fairly. Great result for you, as a welshman, you're making me proud. We couldn't borrow Brendan for a few games could we? P.S. Special mention to Graham, finally scored, all that hard work finally paid off. (the guy seems to work his arse off every game)
Pulis is like many managers - when they don't win it's always the ref's fault. But if they do win, then they thoroughly deserved it. I don't have any respect for managers like that. They need to man-up and admit that they lost fairly and not because the ref made a bad decision. All teams get bad decisions against them, but it rarely affects the result directly.
I just find it very sad that stoke have quality players and are all capable of playing the right way. (as far as we swansea fans are concerned). Pulis has decided that is not his way and to be fair he has had success with it. However that is not for me. When any player signs for them they know how they are going to play and they are happy to go and lets be honest Stoke and Crouch is a match made in heaven. Is how they play football in the real sense, NO. For me i would rather play the swans way. Just watching back the game on football first. How Wilkinson is not sent off is incredible. In all fairness Birtles claimed it as a straight red. Mind you Crouches challenging wasnt much better.
Hi LJ - bumped into you at the railway station on playoff final day, remember? Hope you're well. Think you're being a tad harsh though on Pulis. You make some very valid points about their style of play and on the day they were lucky to finish with 11 men. But you now what you're going to get with teams like Stoke. They are what they are. Yes we can look down our cultured footballing noses at teams like that because we think we play 'the right way' but it's a results driven business and like it or not Pulis has kept one of the smaller clubs up for the last few years and although he has spent a bit of dosh it's nowhere near as some so credit is due. It also proves his style can be effective. It's noticeable that we've benefited from the odd long ball ourselves this season so we can mix it up - something that we never did before. Not every team can play the way we do and Brendan knows this. It's up to him to ensure we keep on doing what we're doing because it's working.
