Last season Derby County was the EPL’s relegation favorite before a ball had been kicked. This season, newcomers Hull City and Stoke City are in the same position ahead of Saturday’s kick-off. Stoke’s manager Tony Pulis is realistic about the task ahead, and has spent the summer coping with the new realities of life in the top flight.
“The Sunday we went up I turned the phone off,” he told the Independent. “I turned it on late Monday afternoon and I had 87 messages. Quite a big percentage were from agents I had never spoken to before in my life. I had all these new friends. I have been so deluged by ‘greatest hits’ DVDs I have had to bring in a new member of staff to deal with them.”
While on vacation the EPL schedule was published, and only when Pulis saw the names of the teams and the stadiums they’d be playing in laid out on paper did it hit home that Stoke was now really a Premier League team. Signing the players he wanted has been a huge challenge, with limited success so far, while Stoke is burdened with the reputation of being a big, physical side antithetical to the concept of the beautiful game. But this doesn’t much concern Pulis.
“The criticism does not bother me,” he said. “The only thing that bothers me is getting a team on the pitch that is competitive and keeping my supporters happy.”