Tony Pulis sacking was largely down to Stoke's failure to raise the bar | Louise Taylor
2 HRS AGO - Old-school Stoke City manager paid the price for failing to introduce a more beautiful game at the
Expand
2 HRS AGO - Old-school Stoke City manager paid the price for failing to introduce a more beautiful game at the Britannia StadiumTony Pulis possibly first suspected his time at Stoke City was running out last December. As Christmas approached, Peter Coates, the club's owner, appointed Mark Cartwright, a former Wrexham and Shrewsbury Town goalkeeper and football agent, to the newly created post of technical director – and two worlds collided.Civil as relations between Pulis and Cartwright might have appeared to casual observers, there were understood to be underlying tensions between an "old-school manager" instinctivelysuspicious of delegation and a 40-year-old tasked with identifying and recruiting competitively priced talent from far-flung corners of the world.Although Pulis had the final say on transfers, Cartwright's appointment represented a loss of control and, perhaps, an implicit criticism on Coates's part of a transfer policy that saw Stoke's net spend on players during the past five
Collapse