Few supporters in England pass on the opportunity to travel with their beloved club for a London fixture. Who wouldn’t want to take a footie-fuelled road trip to the English capital? Safe bet there wasn’t a seat left available on any coach headed from Stoke-on-Trent for this weekend’s game against Londoner’s Crystal Palace once Tony Pulis was named their manager.
No doubt it will be strange for the few thousand Potters fans who make the trek down to Selhurst Park to see their former hero pacing Palace’s touchline.
Many were thrilled their club rid themselves of ‘the Man in the Cap’, and I’m sure Pulis is prepared for a few jeers. But there should be plenty more who remember him as a legend On-Trent. Because he was.
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I’ll admit there weren’t too many matchdays where I said, “man I’m so glad I woke up this early to watch Stoke!” They rarely were a joy to watch, but deep down, every Stoke fan knows their club wouldn’t be anywhere close to where they are today were it not for Tony Pulis.
Once a forgettable mid-table Championship club, Stoke became a club you rarely picked to be relegated when composing your Premier League predictions each summer.
Season after season they took points off any travelling Premier League powerhouse who underestimated “Fortress Britannia.” Pulis even took them to an FA Cup final, and as a result brought Stoke to the most random corners of Europe.
Sure he wasn’t perfect. Yes he spent a lot of money—he wasted a lot on Peter Crouch, and Charlie Adam has rarely matched his bright days at Blackpool.
But through it all, Stoke never finished lower than 14th. They were never soft and Pulis’ teams frequently sent The Britannia into frenzies they never could’ve dreamed of just a decade ago.
Sometimes as fans we get so caught up in the chase for the next thing—in Stoke’s case that’s European football, which is a ridiculous expectation—that we forget where we watched our clubs come from, and how amazing it is just that they are where they are.
Yes they play a more expansive style of football under Mark Hughes, and for once a speck of flair can even be found in Stoke’s DNA. But if Pulis can mastermind three points for Crystal Palace tomorrow, it could lift his new club out of the drop zone and put them within two points of Stoke.
I’m just one fan of the game hoping that Pulis gets some love from the people whose club he put on the map. While his teams may not have been “Stokelona,” they were effective, and he deserves recognition for that.