Tony Pulis column: ‘I had to put everyone on edge’ – how can managers affect a game?
After a full week of working on each player, delving into each individual’s role on the team and how it would affect everything if they failed to make it, I began looking for ways to hurt the opposition.
Obviously set plays have now become the symbol of how teams can do this successfully, but it was that way before me and it’s the same now when I retire.
Defending set-pieces, as well as attacking them, was another thing we would work on. Each individual was aware of his or her own personal struggle, whether in attack or defence.
I would play a home game on a Saturday around 11 a.m., and in my early years I would also train myself before the games.
At this stage, just a few hours before kick-off, I was going to reconsider everything and wait until the kids arrived. Once everyone was settled, I would have a short chat; This wasn’t very exciting! – and then leave the locker room.
When the opposing team’s jersey arrived about 75 minutes before kick-off, I would check our markers player by player – this was important because I always marked man!
I was taking that board to our locker room and going out again until they got back from warm-up. From then on until the players left to start the game, everything that was said was full of confidence and no negativity.
The team talk itself and the final things you say to the players can be very different depending on the situation. I wasn’t always the one giving it.
Again at Stoke, I got Ricardo Fuller talking just before the FA Cup semi-final against Bolton at Wembley in 2011.
Ric was a great character and also an incredibly talented actor. Unfortunately he was injured and out of the game, but he made a once-in-a-lifetime speech to the team, quoting Nelson Mandela.
We won the game 5-0 and to this day I’m sure Ric believes it was the speech that led the lads to that famous conclusion. The players will all tell you that this definitely gets them going.
This shows you that the path to success in football management is not set in stone. You need tremendous durability, yes, but you also need a lot more human strings for your bow.
In my early years at Stoke, we were always the underdogs and no matter who we were playing, the atmosphere was unorthodox.
As time went on and we became more established, the teams that came to Stoke became much more prepared for the experience and our fans became less confident in our underdog position, and rightly so.
To compensate for this, I started using more psychological methods to create an atmosphere in the locker room that would motivate the players.
This might mean mentioning recent comments or news that were negative towards us, or even bringing up things I remember from our early days at the club; Anything that criticizes us in any way and that I know will get a positive reaction from the kids.
This method has greatly helped us get into matches we expect to win.
