Tony Pulis has hailed Peter Coates, the Stoke City owner, for creating the conditions that have allowed the manager to build a team that can compete with Liverpool and the Barclays Premier League’s other big guns.
Stoke are enjoying their second successive season in the top flight and are increasingly being looked upon as an example of a club that live within their means but punch above their weight.
The club are in stark contrast to Liverpool, who have been plunged into massive debt by Tom Hicks and George Gillett Jr, the owners, and are struggling to live up to their reputation, having failed to win 11 of their 21 league games so far this season.
Pulis believes that boardroom stability is one of the key reasons for the Stoke success story and lays all the credit for that at the door of Coates, who is also the chairman. “I’ve worked for foreign owners and I’ve got a fella here who was born and bred in Stoke,” Pulis said. “He’s an absolute Stoke City nut and so is his son and grandson. It’s really reassuring to know that he puts this football club first and foremost above anything.
“I honestly don’t know what’s going on at Liverpool. I’m so committed to this club, whatever other clubs do is up to them. I’ve got my spec, I know what my parameters are, what I can and can’t do. We’re desperately trying to stay in this league for the next three years.
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“We need three years for the benefits of Sky TV, the money and everything that comes with it to put in place a good foundation for this club to push on.
“The chairman recognises it’s three years, not just looking as far as your nose. It’s looking a little bit further than that and seeing which way we can do it in the best possible manner for this football club so we keep getting 28,000 people coming into the ground without any worries financially. It’s a well-run football club and the chairman and his family deserve a pat on the back.”
Pulis described Coates as a “dream chairman”, and revealed that the two men sit down over a cup of tea to discuss the club’s daily goings on.
“I don’t think I go through a day without speaking to my chairman,” Pulis said. “If he has issues, he has issues, and we sit down and have a cup of tea and talk about it. The chief executive is in that loop as well. Tony [Scholes] will look after the finances, I’ll look after the football, we get together if we’re trying to do deals and we either can or we can’t.
“You just have to move on. Obviously I’m banging the drum and I want to bring players in, but they control the situation and I think I’ve got a dream chairman.”