Ok, why was he ungrateful?
StokieSteve,
Just my tuppence for what it's worth about Stoke in general and the match yesterday.
Fair play for winning. You scored more goals than us and that is what matters on the day.
My frustration with Stoke is that the main argument supposedly in your favour is that Pulis plays a certain way because that is playing to your strengths. Personally, I think this is a load of bollocks. True, you don't have the resources that we may have. I'm sure loads of Stokies are celebrating and defending your win by saying that we spent £20M on a Downing or Henderson and you spent next to nothing on your midfield but Pulis' style of football is negative and I don't think this will change even if you finished 6th or 5th and had more money. It's overly direct, with 4 central defenders and no attempt to control the game or use the ball to win the match. Lest we forget but two of your summer signings were Woodgate and Upson, centre backs. He didn't go out and find someone at full back with a bit of pace and trickery who can also defend. He didn't go out and find a playmaking midfielder or a forward with predatory instinct. He signed another defensive midfielder and another tall striker.
What a lot of your fans seem to think (and I am good friends with two season-ticket holders at the Brit) is that this gives you more kudos when you do win games. Sorry, but winning games playing like a bunch of shithouses doesn't deserve more credit. Throwing yourself in front of 20 shots a match clinging on AT home isn't something that should impress you. Let's be honest - you would be considerably prouder if your team actually set out to KEEP THE BALL.
My point is that Pulis buys the players. He tell them how to play. He decides to play 4 centre backs. He tells them to hoof it. He tells them to defend deep and for 9 players to be in your penalty box whenever the opposition are in possession in your half. He doesn't look to win games or if he does, he looks to win them through freakish long throws "because that is all we can afford" or such like. And don't think that I can't appreciate the influence of a negative manager - we've had Houllier and Hodgson!
It's not like you set up one way for a top 4/5/6 team versus a team in the bottom four. You have only achieved more than 50% possession in something like one match since you've been in the Premier League and I think that was against a newly promoted team this season.
I suppose this is all irrelevant if you win matches but as other posters have mentioned, yesterday was a freak result for you. What pisses me off the most is that some Stoke fans seem to think you deserved to win. Let's be utterly frank, you deserved to get utterly shat on. The fact that you didn't is more down to luck than anything else. We missed our chances, granted, but you were played off your own park and for a bit of shit finishing, your fans would have been a split between shrugging and saying that you are never going to compete with another team's resources or arguing about why Pulis sets out his team to be so negative at home. You defended gallantly but let's not forget that you did sod all else and if your fans want to continue believing that this is great then you'll be disappointed. I even saw on Oatcake a mention for Begovic as MOTM. He dropped and flapped at a number of high balls into his box and if Suarez had equalised at the end then people would have slagged him off.
I'm no bad loser but many Stoke fans appear to be bad winners. If you win when you don't deserve to then you should admit it and not try to overly justify the method in which you win. LFC were played off the park against Arsenal in the cup final in 01 and you won't hear us suggesting that we truly deserved it. We got bloody lucky that day, had a huge amount of luck and took two chances which on most days wouldn't have gone in. Some Stoke fans would do well to play down their wins when they get damn lucky.
