There are, being generous, no more than four or five teams that go into a Premier League season with any chance of winning the thing. Indeed, this season there were arguably only two teams in the title race, though Chelsea and Manchester City are at least doing their best to make it exciting.
West Brom have won the most important race of all
Tony Pulis is the managerial equivalent of a Ghostbuster, called upon to battle relegation.
Matthew Lewis/Getty Images
The rest of the league has to make do with any number of sub-races. The race for fourth place, so beloved of Arsenal. The race for seventeenth and safety, presumed to be the target for any newly-promoted team. Tottenham's ongoing race against themselves to end every campaign with a goal difference of zero. And, this season, a very special race that has been won by West Bromwich Albion. The Race for Tony Pulis is over, and the Baggies have nicked it.
Comparing managers up and down the league is a tricky business; while Arsène Wenger and Nigel Pearson have notionally similar jobs, the circumstances and stresses are radically different, and one suspects that each would do rather poorly at the other’s club (not that either’s doing magnificently at their own). But still, nobody of any common sense can attempt to seriously deny that Tony Pulis is, pound for pound, the best manager in the country.
Consider the evidence. He took Stoke into the Premier League, and kept them there. He is a grown adult who wears a baseball cap, yet generally manages to command the respect of a large number of other grown adults. He once bounded out of the showers to headbutt James Beattie. And, most relevantly for West Brom, last season he took over one of the worst sides in the league, a team with 7 points from 12 matches, and turned them into a perfectly acceptable mid-table side. Crystal Palace were utterly doomed when they hired Pulis, and entirely comfortable when the season ended. Manager of the season, and he was only in work for two thirds of it.
By first saving and then departing Crystal Palace, Pulis transformed himself into an emergency service, a managerial Ghostbuster. When you need a win, and your form ain't good: who you gonna call? TONY PULIS! Presumably, drawing 3-3 with Liverpool is the rough equivalent of battling a one hundred and twelve foot tall Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. And Dwight Gayle is the Keymaster. You will perish in flame!
The only vague concern comes with the wider ramifications for West Brom. While Pulis himself has dismissed the argument over what exactly his job title is going to be -- "Titles make no difference, you can call me Head Bottlewasher if you want." -- the distinction between a head coach and a manager has not, at the Hawthorns at least, been simply a question of branding. Alan Irvine was a good coach, given the job on the basis that he wouldn't be doing anything other than coaching; everything else, particularly recruitment, was being handled by others above him. And that, more or less, is precisely the constrained role that Pulis didn't want to accept at Palace.
So, somebody's compromised; either Pulis has accepted a smaller job than he would ideally hope for, or West Brom have enlarged the job. Or a bit of both. Either way, the outlook is an interesting one: Pulis was notoriously profligate and inconsistent with his transfers at Stoke, while whoever's been calling the shots at West Brom has an albatross of a record signing named Brown Ideye hanging round their neck. When the inconsistent force and the inconsistent object enter the transfer market together, money gets a-wasted.
Fortunately for the Baggies, the core of the squad is perfectly decent. All squads could do with a tweak or two, but Ben Foster, Joleon Lescott and Saido Berahino represent a decent spine. The consensus seems to have been that Irvine was an interesting and popular coach but, as the Daily Mail put it, "too nice -- unable to provoke performances on matchdays". Which is not an accusation that anybody's ever levelled at Pulis.
In some ways it’s a shame that Pulis looks unlikely to ever get a crack at one of the teams that might, in a good year, figure in the title race. It would be fascinating to see how his undoubted managerial ability would translate when given a squad of the highest quality; whether he could scale his methods up to the need to win relentlessly, to challenge for trophies; whether he could command the respect of a dressing room full of the very best. Not least because, from a neutral perspective, it would be excellent viewing: either he’d tear the established order apart, or he go full Moyes and ask Gareth Bale to sling long throws into the box. Guaranteed entertainment.
But the paths to the biggest dugouts don’t seem to pass through the likes of Crystal Palace and West Brom any more. Mid-table solidity and the occasional cup run seems to be the height of the glass ceiling that separates the elite from the rest of the merry-go-round. Still, Real Madrid’s loss is West Brom’s gain: that’s exactly what they need, and that’s exactly what Pulis delivers. Hold on to your caps, folks. The best in the business is back.
See More:
