Newcastle: 5 Things We Learnt From Stoke Victory

4. The Pressure Continues To Grow On Pulis

As a regular listener of football phone-ins, I€™m always shocked when Stoke fans phone in and talk about how it€™s time for Pulis to go. From an outside point of view I€™ve always felt he had brought the club a long way and the results mean the style of football is acceptable. On Sunday though I understood their problem: the brand of football Stoke played was awful, it was punt it down the field every time stuff but worse than this was the mentality and the attitude Stoke were there for a 0-0 or maybe snatch a goal and defend it. For the fans that had travelled this is unacceptable, they want to see their team go and try and win not play like that. This seems to have only made the pressure grow further on their manager. A lot of fans are willing to put up with the style of football as long as results are good but the Newcastle game continued a poor run of results. Stoke have only won once in their last ten matches and they were awful on Sunday. They lacked any creativity and all they seem to have is a physical presence, one which they couldn€™t properly impose on Newcastle. With fans unhappy with Pulis, the match simply increased this pressure. With Stoke sliding down the table and the performances poor the pressure will only continue to mount and mount on Pulis.