Pulis on the Debate.

I honestly don’t know how anyone with an ounce of love for the game can tolerate that man’s tactics.
Btw its not just us
https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/sp...s/west-brom-middlesbrough-tony-pulis-15577270
How do you mean 'tolerate' though Zorro? This stuff was never in my hands. I have no choice but to tolerate whoever is in charge of our club.

I know its not just Boro fans. There's an attitude within football now that the game has to be played a certain way to be enjoyable. If everyone played the same way though, football wouldn't be enjoyable to me at all.

Lets not make out that Woody plays free-flowing attacking football though. We score less goals under Woody than we did under Pulis.
 
How do you mean 'tolerate' though Zorro? This stuff was never in my hands. I have no choice but to tolerate whoever is in charge of our club.

I know its not just Boro fans. There's an attitude within football now that the game has to be played a certain way to be enjoyable. If everyone played the same way though, football wouldn't be enjoyable to me at all.

Lets not make out that Woody plays free-flowing attacking football though. We score less goals under Woody than we did under Pulis.
I don’t think anyone thinks we play free flowing football I think it’s Pulis Attitude to the game is which people done like, no one wants to go and watch a game with 3 massive centre backs then Ryan Shotton and George friend as wing backs and a further 4 central midfielders ahead of them, then a Lonesome Jordan Hugill about 50/60 yards away from anyone . At least now we have a team and an attitude to get behind.

I think we will see a lot more positives next season, especially if we continue to trust the likes of Coulson and Spence. Last season I didn’t really understand the logic by Pulis
 
He was probably the biggest killer to our atmosphere I've ever known. Used to be going good for the first 20 minutes and then just go dead. It would feel like we were the away side trying to quiet the home crowd. I wouldn't ever slag him off in the stands, but it got to the point where I wasn't bothered if work meant I couldn't go to the match.
 
Agree with Block.

The tactics and team selections deployed by Pulis were nothing short of shocking.

His transfers were a joke.

I honestly couldn't see a long term plan with him at the helm.

He consistently tried to sign central midfielders - when it was bloody obvious that area was the last to prioritise.

I know Woodgate isn't experienced and a lot of fans didn't want him, but at least we have some sort of vision for the long-term.

He's bedding in youth for a start. More than what can be said about Pulis!
 
The difference between this season and last is that even though we aren't very good, you know we are at least trying to win matches. I would much rather try and fail than to not try at all. Pulis knew how to not got beat, that's why he was good at the bottom end of the league in the PL. That doesn't work when you are chasing promotion. You have to win regularly. It is 100% his approach that put so many people off. It was awful to watch and it was depressing. Even teams we should have been beating easily we set up defensively. The cup match against Newport summed it all up for me. It's one of the worst matches I've ever witnessed. Not because we lost, we've lost to lower league teams plenty of times, but the tactics and the way we approached the game.
 
Look forwards to the games this season, guessing the team, the formation(s), who is going to be injured this week, whether Wing and Tav will step up and have a decent game, whether Britt will actually trap a ball or win a header etc etc. At least Wing is scoring a few goals.
Last season I used to dread matchday coming around.
Agree we need to start picking up wins but its a been about fine margins this season. With more luck and better finishing we could have done better but on the whole the football has been while not great every game an improvement from Pulis.
 
The difference between this season and last is that even though we aren't very good, you know we are at least trying to win matches. I would much rather try and fail than to not try at all. Pulis knew how to not got beat, that's why he was good at the bottom end of the league in the PL. That doesn't work when you are chasing promotion. You have to win regularly. It is 100% his approach that put so many people off. It was awful to watch and it was depressing. Even teams we should have been beating easily we set up defensively. The cup match against Newport summed it all up for me. It's one of the worst matches I've ever witnessed. Not because we lost, we've lost to lower league teams plenty of times, but the tactics and the way we approached the game.

Well if you look at the stats we had a lot more success at 'winning' than this season. I don't think I ever questioned Pulis' desire to win. He went about it in a way that was a bit different to Woodgate and a bit less, at least in terms of the XI he picked, 'in vogue', but far more successful albeit with a slightly stronger squad. If he wasn't even trying to win, imagine how good it could have been if he was?

The main thing, basically, I've learned from this season is that if you play young players en masse, the fans will get behind them initially and show much more forgiveness for poor football and poor results, which is understandable but also I probably knew it anyway. Its played out more pertinently this season than any other for me (I was too young to remember 86). We've been poor in lots of matches this season but I like a lot of the players and so do most of our fans. When you're rubbish with more experienced players, fans are ruthless towards them and towards the manager picking them, even if they're actually doing better.

"at least we have some sort of vision for the long-term."

Well that maybe the case but if you go on Facebook and Twitter there's a very significant proportion of our fans who don't think Woodgate should see out the first year of his three year contract. If we don't make significant improvement early next season, with or without kids, the fans may force Gibson's hand as they have in the past and then any suggestion that it was ever a 'long term plan' will be laughable.

I've no issue with sticking with Woodgate at all, but I feel like I'm missing out on something by not still feeling loads of anger towards the guy who managed us last season to one point outside the play-offs when we were, frankly, a more effective football team.
 
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'
"at least we have some sort of vision for the long-term."

Well that maybe the case but if you go on Facebook and Twitter there's a very significant proportion of our fans who don't think Woodgate should see out the first year of his three year contract. If we don't make significant improvement early next season, with or without kids, the fans may force Gibson's hand as they have in the past and then any suggestion that it was ever a 'long term plan' will be laughable.

I've no issue with sticking with Woodgate at all, but I feel like I'm missing out on something by not still feeling loads of anger towards the guy who managed us last season to one point outside the play-offs when we were, frankly, a more effective football team. '



I agree, I have seen a lot of comments made on social media about the need to get rid of Woodgate and I understand that. - However when I said 'I see some sort of vision long-term' - I meant as a club on the whole.

Under Pulis I couldn't see a strategy, we just spent money on anything - £7m on Flint & £7/£8m on Saville for example, whereas now we are trying to be proactive in the market in trying to sniff out a gem. Yes it may not have worked so far - but at least we have some sort of plan. As well as trying to promote youth - which so far has been successful - Coulson & Spence have been great this season.

Is Woodgate the right man to lead this new vision? Only time will tell. However I am far more confident that our club is more stable now, than under Pulis.

Plus, we all knew from the start of this season that it would be a transition period for the club.
 
'
"at least we have some sort of vision for the long-term."

Well that maybe the case but if you go on Facebook and Twitter there's a very significant proportion of our fans who don't think Woodgate should see out the first year of his three year contract. If we don't make significant improvement early next season, with or without kids, the fans may force Gibson's hand as they have in the past and then any suggestion that it was ever a 'long term plan' will be laughable.

I've no issue with sticking with Woodgate at all, but I feel like I'm missing out on something by not still feeling loads of anger towards the guy who managed us last season to one point outside the play-offs when we were, frankly, a more effective football team. '



I agree, I have seen a lot of comments made on social media about the need to get rid of Woodgate and I understand that. - However when I said 'I see some sort of vision long-term' - I meant as a club on the whole.

Under Pulis I couldn't see a strategy, we just spent money on anything - £7m on Flint & £7/£8m on Saville for example, whereas now we are trying to be proactive in the market in trying to sniff out a gem. Yes it may not have worked so far - but at least we have some sort of plan. As well as trying to promote youth - which so far has been successful - Coulson & Spence have been great this season.

Is Woodgate the right man to lead this new vision? Only time will tell. However I am far more confident that our club is more stable now, than under Pulis.

Plus, we all knew from the start of this season that it would be a transition period for the club.

But I have no doubt whatsoever that if there was £6-8m available to spend on players, Woody would spend it. We don't know how well that would turn out but we might one day. The circumstances he's in have been forced upon him, not through choice. You could argue that he's managed the situation relatively well *by* giving youth a chance, as it does keep a fair proportion of the fans on side at least even if we are hovering above the relegation zone.

When we signed Saville, and I don't think we can entirely lay the blame for any signing entirely at a manager's door in modern football, he was 24 and a 'hot prospect' in this league. I think he was very much part of a 'long term plan'. Sure he's not pulled up trees, but he's not the worst player we've had and he's not the most expensive flop we've had either, if you look at the total cost of ownership. £7m is about the going rate for an established second-tier 24 year old goalscoring midfielder (that he was signed as). If we were to sell him tomorrow I bet we'd get back most of what we paid. We've definitely made worse signings. Same could be said of McNair and of course we did get our money back on Flint.

I don't agree about the long term plan criticism, we signed a small group of established Championship players in their early-mid 20s. I get the criticism of tactics, to a degree, but I also don't think they were half as ineffective as is often made out, especially when you look at the amount of goals scored compared to this season.
 
The thing with Pulis I don't get is how much better we were to watch in his first (half) season with us. I know he had the likes of Traore and Bamford, but we played some really good attacking football, thinking of the snowbound Leeds game in particular. We were simply fantastic that night. We didn't have the same awful defensive negative mentality as we did last season.

The writing should have been on the wall though with his transfer business, some of which he had no control over: -

Out - Gibson, Traore, Bamford, Fabio, Christie, Braithwaite
In - Flint, Saville*, Besic, Hugill, Harrison**, van La Parra**, Mikel

* I like Saville and he's finally starting to show that he is a decent player.

** Still no idea why we signed these two if he had no intention of ever playing them??
 
There were so many reports from people visiting Hurworth saying how Tony Pulis found time to chat with them and how pleasant he was.
 
Pulis said during Van La Parra's loan that they were struggling to work out what was his injury problem. He had high hopes for him but they couldn't get him fit and eventually they diagnosed it was his back and I then think he had to rest and recuperate and so that was it really for him at Boro.
Pulis once gave me an impassioned answer at a press conference, sadly off the record, so I could never relay it. And it had nothing at all to do with my question - but started with how his grandfather was Maltese and couldn't speak any English yet was accepted in the Newport community and how people were overcrowded in terrace houses yet everyone helped everyone else out - if they needed bread etc. He wasn't living in the past but he despared at what was happening with racism which he abhored and how the privileged and the privately educated were running the world for themselves. And ordinary people couldn't even afford bread anymore...
I have to say he was so totally different to the Tony Pulis I expected. I think he had mellowed considerably with age.
 
I have absolutely no doubt that he is a decent person (the Crystal Palace thing aside, but we don't really know what went on there) and he always said some genuinely honest and really nice things about the town and area as a whole. It was the football he served up last season that people were fed up with. It wasn't good to watch and frustratingly we had some attacking players available who could have made a real difference, like Tav, Wing and Fletcher, especially at home against some of the lesser teams.
 
I have absolutely no doubt that he is a decent person (the Crystal Palace thing aside, but we don't really know what went on there) and he always said some genuinely honest and really nice things about the town and area as a whole. It was the football he served up last season that people were fed up with. It wasn't good to watch and frustratingly we had some attacking players available who could have made a real difference, like Tav, Wing and Fletcher, especially at home against some of the lesser teams.
For some rico, it was mainly about the football, but for others, they had a raw deep-routed personal hatred of the man which there are shades of even on this thread. I'll honestly never understand it (and I didn't even think the football was that bad at least when you consider how often we came away with 3 points). I'm not saying I'm right and everyone else is wrong, just that there is something I'm clearly missing that I'll never understand.

"I honestly don’t know how anyone with an ounce of love for the game can tolerate that man’s tactics."

Well my love for the club outweighs my love for the game itself and I honestly thought he did ok for us, not "well", but ok. And so yes I was happy to tolerate him. I don't think Woody is proving himself to be a master tactician of any kind yet either, and I'm happy to tolerate him too.
 
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I watched the play off semi final against villa in a pub in Droitwich with his sister. She lived next door to my mate, who's also a Boro fan, and agreed to join us. She was a lovely lady, Donned a Boro scarf and joined In with the craic. We were outnumbered by about 50/3. She had some great stories to tell about him and about their hardship growing up in Newport. He basically pays her a monthly wage to see her right. Obviously its sister but he only seems a sound bloke to be honest.
 
'I watched the play off semi final against villa in a pub in Droitwich with his sister.'

Poor lass. Fancy making her sit through that.

Then again, she'll have probably been used to those type of performances if she's followed a lot of her brothers football teams.
 
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