Tony Pulis Paid a Bus Driver to Foil Stoke’s Beer Trip

• Tony Pulis revealed in his BBC Sport column that he once paid a bus driver a few quid to stop his Stoke players finding a pub in Austria.
• He used the story to explain why Tottenham’s team-bonding trip to Marbella makes sense for Roberto de Zerbi and his new-look squad.
• Pulis also asked why it took so long for Manchester City to be found guilty of breaking the Premier League’s financial rules, saying the saga has cast a “shadow over the entire game”.

From Blackpool Guest Houses to a Spanish Training Camp

Tottenham’s trip to Marbella last week got Tony Pulis thinking about his own days of taking players away. The former Stoke manager says the idea has not changed while the methods have: put players in a new place where they spend plenty of time together.

Spurs spent more than £250m on new talent over the summer and added 10 players to Roberto de Zerbi’s squad, several of them late in the window. Pulis thinks the early break makes perfect sense for a manager who is working with what is almost a new team. He expects De Zerbi to have drilled his principles on team shape and direction morning and afternoon, and to have watched how the different personalities behave away from the grass. If the trip worked, he says, De Zerbi should now understand the strengths and weaknesses of each player on and off the field, ahead of the game with Coventry on Monday night.

Pulis said he learned a lot about his own players on such trips. He told BBC Sport’s Chris Bevan he “found out a lot about all of them, good and bad”, and admitted that one or two lacked the character he wanted and did not last long.

Beer, Dog Muck and a Shared Bed

The modern version is first class, with great hotels and food, and a second bus following the team bus for the non-playing staff. Pulis’s early years were very different. As a player he was taken to Blackpool for three days of pre-season training.

The squad stayed in a guest house and shared three-quarter beds, which he jokes certainly brought them closer together. They trained on the beach each morning, running on the sand, then played seven-a-side games on a local park pitch in the afternoon after clearing the dog muck off first.

In the evenings the players were allowed out for a few beers, with no set time to be back. The only rule was to be downstairs and ready to hit the beach at 8am. Pulis says the drinking culture of the 1970s and 80s ran right through the leagues, and bonding in his early years as a manager happened through the season in pubs after games and after training.

He is glad his generation grew up without mobile phones. He used to go mad if he walked into a dining room and found a group of players looking at their screens instead of each other.

Army Camps and a Castle in the Alps

Pulis also took teams to army camps early in his managerial career. One year Stoke went to Exmouth for cross-country circuits that included climbing and swimming under water in a darkened tunnel, and he did all of it himself. It was freezing cold and pouring with rain. In the afternoon the players faced team-building tasks, such as using drums and planks to cross an area without touching the ground. At night they slept in bunk beds with plastic sheeting on the mattress and one thin blanket.

Gareth Southgate took his England squad to a Commando Training Centre in Devon in 2017, so Pulis was not the only manager to try it.

As he moved up, the trips got more lavish. His favourite destination is Irdning in Austria, where he took many clubs and where Real Madrid also stayed. Stoke ended up playing Real Madrid in a friendly there in 2007 as Stoke had already booked the hotel and Madrid offered to play them if they swapped. Pulis calls the 1,000-year-old building where his teams stayed “The Castle”. It has swimming pools, a gym, saunas, a spa and a golf course.

The Bus Driver Plot

His first visit, in 2004, could have gone badly. It was his first spell as Stoke manager, and he was struggling under the Icelandic ownership, who he liked as people but disagreed with on football. His squad was full of strong characters and old-school players who had worked their socks off for the first three days.

The fourth day was meant to be a rest day, with fishing, golf or shopping on offer. The players had other ideas. Gerry Taggart asked if the group could borrow the team bus and go somewhere for a few beers away from the hotel.

Pulis said yes, “kind of”. He knew the group were fun-loving and would be out of his sight and control, and the alarm bells were ringing. So, without telling the players, he paid the driver a few quid to make sure he did not find any really exciting places. The group ended up back at the hotel. The players worked out who was behind it, but Pulis believes they still had a great time, with the manager keeping an eye on things. “That’s probably not something De Zerbi had to worry about last week!” he wrote.

A Question for the Premier League

Pulis finished the column with a look at Manchester City. He praised last week’s Champions League game against Paris St-Germain, which PSG won 4-2 after City came back strongly in the second half, as a throwback full of crosses, shots and forward passing.

He also turned to the verdict from the independent commission. When City were found guilty of breaking the Premier League’s financial rules, Pulis said tongue in cheek that they should send their 2011 FA Cup and winners’ medals to Stoke. They have not arrived. His serious point is a question: why did it take so long to reach this stage after the Premier League first found City had broken the rules, and why were league officials still standing on podiums handing City trophies? The saga, he says, has soured the whole game.