Tony Pulis Out at Stoke City

Manager Tony Pulis has left Stoke City (bbc.co.uk)

The EPL "silly season" is about to hit high gear now that the season is officially over.  Manchester City didn't wait for the season to be over to sack Roberto Mancini, and Stoke City's Tony Pulis is now the next man booted off of the managerial carousel.  The club announced on Monday that Pulis and Stoke were parting ways by mutual consent.

There's good and bad with Tony Pulis.  First off, he's never been relegated as a manager.  In his years at Stoke, he brought them up to the Premier League and kept them there for the last five.  Plus, you usually didn't see Stoke down fighting the relegation battles near the bottom three either, though it was close this year.  An away trip to Stoke was always a tough three points, even for the Premier League's big clubs.  A draw was considered fairly standard.

His club's style has been the sticking point.  Offensively, Stoke have been known to get their midfield to just lob balls over the top to their strikers, with little or no variation to this "direct approach."  Defensively, they've been hard nosed and relatively tough to score against, but their offensive approach yielded little in the way of goals, creating many draws.  Pulis only won 29% of his matches at Stoke.

Stoke have been a pretty solid mid-table bet, but they've shown little progress, either in moving up the table or changing their style of play to facilitate that move.  Of interest to American fans, Pulis brought two MLS men to Stoke: Houston's Geoff Cameron and Brek Shea of FC Dallas.  Cameron has gotten some time, enough to be in the US National Team mix.  Shea has had a tougher go of it, failing to crack the 18 most weekends.

No word yet on where Pulis will end up. It's hard to see him being considered for one of the bigger EPL openings, say Everton or City.  I could see him ending up in a Harry Redknapp type situation, where a club struggling in the bottom three in the middle of the season tries to bring him in to help them avoid relegation, we'll see.

There hasn't been much speculation as of yet about Stoke's vacancy.  The AP is suggesting Everton's Phil Neville, who is retiring, or Brighton's Gus Poyet.  Sky Sports has been focusing largely on former QPR boss Mark Hughes and Roberto Di Matteo, who guided Chelsea to UEFA Champion's League title as interim boss last season.