“He’s a good fit..” Middlesbrough expert on Sheffield Wednesday-linked Tony Pulis

The Welshman, who achieved great success with the likes of Gillingham before taking Stoke to the top tier and enjoying stints at West Brom and Crystal Palace, is out of work having left Middlesbrough in 2019.

Known as a no-nonsense operator who prefers his sides to set up with a direct style of play, he would be considered a safe pair of hands by many.

But how much of the Pulis image is pantomime and how much is wide of the mark?

The Star spoke to Joe Nicholson, Middlesbrough FC reporter for the Hartlepool Mail, for the inside scoop on what Wednesday could expect should Pulis get the gig.

What was the problem exactly?

The problem he had was that the aim at that time was promotion. Ironically, he took over from Garry Monk who had taken charge after relegation from the Premier League when Steve Gibson came out with his ‘smash the Championship’ stuff.

Monk got the sack and Pulis came in when the expectation was very much promotion. He got the into the playoffs and was getting the best out of Adama Traore.

But in that summer Traore left and Patrick Bamford left, and what they ended up with was a style of play that was quite negative and defensive. They were grinding out results and finished just outside the playoffs, but the fans weren’t happy with the football being played.

He couldn’t have gone on another season because the fans just weren’t having him.

Is the sometime image of Pulis as a one-dimensional long-ball merchant fair?

The first half-season he came in, some of the games were quite entertaining. They beat Leeds 3-0 and Bamford scored a hat-trick, Traore was unplayable, they drew 3-3 with Sunderland, there were a lot of high-scoring games.

You couldn’t say that was boring football, but after he lost those players and couldn’t replace them, he began playing central midfield players on the wing, he played centre-backs as full-backs and it lost that excitement.

Once Traore and Bamford were lost, the whole team and club went flat.

What sort of players would Pulis get the best out of?

He likes a big man up front and played Rudy Gestede up top until he got injured, he was a big part of things initially and the centre-backs always flourish.

People may say the creative players wouldn’t play a big part under him, but with the likes of Traore he really put his arm around him and really played a big part in his career. He encouraged wingers like that to play in the right areas.

He won’t be encouraging players to play out from the back or anything like that, it’s mainly long and direct.

There was a lot of talk about Boro fans rallying against his style of play. Was he hard done to in the end?

He couldn’t have continued the way it finished. They were competing for a playoff spot all season and then lost six games in a row.

The game that the fans turned an that a lot of Boro fans remember was against Brentford, when they were 1-0 up at home. He took off Britt Assombalonga, who was top scorer, and brought on a defender in George Friend.

That got a massive backlash and they ended up losing the game. He invited pressure and lost the game, from that point on the fans turned and there were chants of “Pulis Out”.

What is his personality like, in the media and with the fans?

He’s not the biggest fan of press conferences and things like that. He was always careful of what he said about Steve Gibson, but there was clearly something that was not right. He was always talking about targets they hadn’t been able to bring in.

He didn’t want to name-drop people but there was something that was clearly not right.

Gut feeling – would it work for him at Sheffield Wednesday?

To keep Wednesday up, he’s a good fit. The problem at Middlesbrough was that the target was promotion and that anything else would have been a failure.

The way he plays, it was never going to be likely that he’d string the run of wins in a row that would see them promoted.

With the situation that Wednesday are in in the table, that suits Pulis a lot more in terms of his management style, where he’s had big success has been in keeping clubs up and consolidating a position. Pulis sides don’t score enough goals to win consecutive games on the bounce.

To keep them up, I think it would be a good appointment.

What about now? How is his reign looked at by Boro fans?

The fans wanted him to leave, but comments I saw was a case of ‘be careful what you wish for’. Jonathan Woodgate came in and it was an absolute disaster really, they could have easily gone down.

A lot of fans wanted him out, but they soon realised what a good job he was doing, albeit with a style of play that wasn’t the best to watch, they may have appreciated that he was doing a good job looking forward to what happened the next season.

They might well have gone down had they not brought in Neil Warnock.

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