Pulis has his team, now he must deliver. No excuses.
We are coming up to the third year that Tony Pulis has been head coach of West Brom in January, and finally it can be said he has his team built, so now, it’s time to deliver.
In his time in charge, Pulis has been outspoken on Albion’s transfer activity (or lack of it), however, now with nearly £40m spent in the summer, there’s no need for defensive and poor performances, he needs to deliver.
If you look at Albion’s squad, it’s the strongest it’s ever been. With a midfield made up of a €30 million-rated Gregorz Krychowiak, all-time Premier League appearance maker Gareth Barry and England international Jake Livermore, a defence of Manchester City target Jonny Evans, three time FA Cup winner Kieran Gibbs and a striker who was on the brink of the England World Cup squad three years ago, Jay Rodriguez, is there really an excuse for poor, defensive performances?
The answer is simply no, and with reactions on social media over the past weeks, there is a clear frustration from fans. The problems seems to lie with the Welshman in charge.
Pulis’ issue is that he is a very limited manager in terms of the position of the club. There is no doubting he’s a very good manager, his track record proves that, but, his track record is about keeping teams up. West Brom fans want more than that and right now, it looks like Pulis is not the man to deliver it.
It almost seems insulting to the players in the Albion squad who are all seasoned pros, internationally and domestically, that the tactics they are given are too defensive, that in press conferences we are told time and time again that the club we are playing are stronger than us, that it is said we cannot compete with the finances of the league despite having the fifth highest net spend in the league over the summer.
It must be downgrading for these players to be told they can’t go out and express themselves and their ability because they are not good enough to have a mix of defence and attack when if they went to other clubs, may be told differently.
The games against Stoke and West Ham were poor, defensive and quite honestly, boring. One shot on target against a West Ham team who at that point were floating around the relegation zone. A team which Albion put three past in the first half last season before going on to win 4-2. With the team West Brom have, there is simply no excuse for this anymore.
It was the Watford game where the real disappointment struck for Albion fans though. After afirst 30 minutes which people have been wanting for a while, following a positive first half against Arsenal, it seemed almost bizarre that a winning formula had been broken.
The whole team sat back went to five in midfield and Albion struggled to create anything from that point on. Those tactics are fine at times and often work with fifteen minutes to go but certainly not an hour to go.
From a personal opinion, there wasn’t a lot of disappointment when Watford scored in the last minute. We didn’t deserve to win that game and the failing of Pulis’ tactics that day will hopefully mean he’ll not use them in the future.
With tough games coming up against Leicester, Southampton and Manchester City, Albion and Pulis really need to buckle up and get some points on the board.
Just like he did at Stoke, Pulis has grown the club and everyone has to be thankful for that. However, Pulis has taken us to a point where the club has now outgrown him.
I hope he proves me wrong but he seems to not be able to manage players with real ability and natural talent and he has to start to deliver or else more and more fans will turn against him.