Tony Pulis has seen the mock-up image of Mikel Arteta dressed up as him, complete with baseball cap, and he loves it.
Indeed, Pulis is finding the comparisons between Arsenal and his vintage Stoke team all rather amusing, and has invited Telegraph Sport to his house in Lilliput to discuss them in more detail.
Arteta’s Arsenal have become renowned as the Premier League’s set-piece experts, with a league-high 10 goals scored this season to put them in contention for the title. Pulis, of course, established a reputation at Stoke for his team’s prowess from corners and dead-ball situations between 2008 to 2013, striking fear into opponents and particularly Arsène Wenger.
Arteta has admitted watching Wenger’s teams struggle to cope had helped convince him of the importance of set-plays, and Pulis is finding the attention fascinating.
“Arteta has done fantastically well to recognise how important set-plays are. When you look at it, Arsenal have won a hell of a lot of games from them,” says Pulis. “Arsène would most probably be shaking his head at the amount of praise Arteta is getting for using the corners and set-plays to such an extent that it’s deciding games for them.
“We always knew how important set-plays were and how certain aspects of defending were. It has always been a massive part of professional football, whether you like it or not.”
Wenger was certainly not a fan, and his distaste for Stoke became legendary during those scraps between Arsenal and Pulis’s streetwise team at what was then the Britannia Stadium.
“Rugby-style tactics” was how Wenger once described Stoke’s strategy to unsettle and disrupt from corners, set-plays and Rory Delap’s long throws.
“It’s funny because Arsène brought a lot of good stuff into the game but he couldn’t cope with the belief that set-plays were that important,” says Pulis. “It was all about the good football he wanted to play, completely different to maybe what I like to see.
“We were called dinosaurs. Maybe I was a trend-setter! I’ve had Liverpool fans bump into me and talk about Jürgen Klopp wearing my cap.
“People have mentioned how managers now wear white trainers on the touchline like I did. And now there’s obviously the set-plays.”
Under Arteta, Arsenal have scored an impressive 45 goals in the Premier League from set-pieces since the start of the 2022/23 season. They have been described as the “corner kings”.
Arteta has frequently pointed to the expertise of set-piece coach Nicolas Jover, who was recruited from Manchester City in 2021 and has made a huge impact. The specialist now has a mural dedicated to him outside the Emirates.
There are many other high-profile set-piece specialists, including Aston Villa’s Austin MacPhee and Chelsea’s Bernardo Cueva.
Pulis says: “It does make me giggle at times, there was something like 250 goals scored from set-plays in the Premier League last season and the set-piece coach gets all the credit for the goals scored.
“What I’d be asking is: ‘Why are we conceding?’ Never mind scoring, do they take the responsibility for goals scored against them? I don’t know. Have they got different people who do defensive corners and attacking corners? I used to do it all myself.”
Pulis’s focus on set-plays was the stuff of legend at Stoke, and at many of his other clubs including Gillingham and West Bromwich Albion during a long managerial career.
Laser focus and constant repetition
Hours and hours of work went into them at training grounds up and down the country, testing the patience of his players with constant repetition.
It has always been an under-rated skill and, frequently, the effects were devastating. Pulis’s back-fours were usually so organised and well-drilled that they resembled table footballers, with the defensive line never wavering.
Arsenal still have a way to go to catch up Pulis’s Stoke record: in the Premier League under him they scored 81 set-piece goals from a total of 188 goals [43.1%].
“I would lose my temper and get annoyed if the players didn’t concentrate in training,” he says. “We would really study teams and how they defended set-plays.
“I learnt very early that zonal marking and man-for-man marking were completely different.
“With zonal marking we’d play the numbers game. With man-to-man we’d work on movement across the line of the ball. Delivery is vital, and we would look for the inswinging ball like Arsenal are doing now.”
Marginal gains were crucial to Pulis during his managerial career, and maximising everything from the personnel available.
After passing the Pro-License equivalent at the age of 21, he recalls FA seminars at Lilleshall with the likes of Sir Bobby Robson, Don Howe and Dave Sexton opening his mind to the possibilities. During those sessions, set-plays were at the forefront.
The secret to longevity in management: winning
Pulis refers to Terry Venables’s Crystal Palace teams of the 1980s as being trailblazers. At Shrewsbury, Graham Turner was the first manager Pulis remembers who focused on near-post corners.
“The main reason why and how you stay in management is to win games. It’s not about how you do it, it’s winning games,” he says. “The principles of that was you have to analyse the players you’ve got and work with a system that gets the best out of them, whether it’s a simple way or more complicated with moving parts.
“I always understood how important set-plays were in respect of gaining results, especially at clubs without the resources of the top ones.”
Pulis is now officially retired from management, with his final job a 45-day stint with Sheffield Wednesday in December 2020. He amassed 1,137 games – one thousand behind close friend Sir Alex Ferguson – winning promotion out of every division and taking Stoke to an FA Cup final and the Europa League knockout stages.
Always unfairly pigeon-holed as a long-ball manager, he takes particular pride from his time with Crystal Palace. After guiding them from bottom to 11th, he won the Premier League Manager of the Season in 2014.
“We didn’t have a big centre-forward like Crouchie [Peter Crouch], we played a different way because that was the strength of the team,” he says. “We had [Yannick] Bolasie and [Jason] Puncheon wide, and [Marouane] Chamakh just in behind dropping in as a No 10, and they were fantastic for us. We played a very competent counter-attacking game of football.
“The two centre-halves [Scott Dann and Damien Delaney] weren’t quick but they would head battleships out of the water. We never let any space in behind us and had two midfielders in Joe Ledley and Mile Jedinak who would drop off, box the two centre-halves off, sit in front of them and never move. Chamakh would play as a No 10 and turn inside to send the wingers away. It was a brilliant time.”
Pulis turned 67 last month and is still an invaluable sounding board to managers in all divisions. He is passionate about the importance of mentoring youngsters in academies, and recently presented an excellent Sky Sports documentary ‘Chasing the Dream’. He is disappointed to not have received any feedback from the Premier League so far.
While that subject is something he feels strongly about, he is also growing increasingly weary with VAR.
“Football has been wonderful for me, I’ve got so much respect for the game and I know it moves on – but how referees can sit in a room and still get decisions wrong after watching it time and time again is absolutely gobsmacking,” he says.
“I know the referees won’t want this because they live in a bubble of their own but I would love an ex-player to sit on the panel and give his opinion. You’re getting people making decisions who don’t understand what a good or bad tackle is, who haven’t played the game.
“I always wanted VAR or technology, I thought it would be a good tool for the smaller clubs for decisions to even it up. It just needs to get better.”
Pulis is in brilliant form at the family home in Lilliput, the beautiful retreat on the edge of the Poole harbour and bordering Sandbanks. He has seven grandchildren and spends a lot of his free time taking long walks on the beach with his wife Debs.
On Monday, he played a round of golf with his neighbour Harry Redknapp, for whom he played for and assisted at Bournemouth in the late 1980s and early 90s. Pulis still watches as many games as he can, and says his favourite teams to watch are Bournemouth, Nottingham Forest and Liverpool.
Crossed words with Shawcross
Those heady days with Stoke are never far from his mind and, just as he prepares to leave to watch one of his grandchildren play tennis, recollects another golden story.
“We played at Blackburn and were winning 2-0 at half-time. As I’m walking down the side I said to ‘Kempy’ [assistant Dave Kemp] that I was worried as we were so comfortable. Big Sam [Allardyce] was manager of Blackburn and I knew he’d be spitting blood in the dressing room.
“I didn’t want to give the players any praise. Just before we’d gone in, Ryan [Shawcross] had shanked a clearance into the stand. We came in and they were all sat down, and I ripped Ryan to bits. I’ve gone absolutely mad at him. All the other lads are sitting there stunned, saying, “but we’re 2-0 up?” I was screaming that it won’t be easy, Sam will have them so wound up, you won’t know what’s coming and all that.
“The bell goes for the second-half and I go to the toilet. Next to me is one of the substitutes, Jonathan Woodgate, and he’s begging me: ‘Gaffer, whatever happens, please don’t put me on today.’
“I asked him why. He said: ‘There’s no way I can play as well as Ryan played and you’ve absolutely hammered him!’”
