Top 66 Tony Pulis Quotes

However terrible the football, when you’re winning you can get away with it.

There is no point going man-to-man with a player of Messi’s ability. He is so clever he would drag your player all over the pitch and still find a way to destroy you, probably exploiting the hole you’ve left by assigning someone to that role.

People go on about my style of play. But I tell you what I do – I go into football clubs, I try to find out what systems suit the players and I try to get the damnedest out of those players. That’s what I’ve done everywhere I’ve been.

Everyone talks about not being relegated, but as a manager I have got a few promotions.

I’ve never had dirty teams.

It’s annoying and disappointing that people think I just keep clubs up.

The biggest thing about management is self-motivation.

When you have seven grandchildren and you’ve been around them a while, they soften you up. But there’s still that little streak in me that if I need to make sure something has to be done, then it gets done.

I just get on with my job and do that job to the best of my ability.

There are too many people coming out of school and heading into a life of nothing. They go straight on the dole or into crime.

I think sometimes people don’t understand the difference between being competitive and being dirty.

We all get knocked down in life, the big thing is getting back up.

My approach to every game is the same.

I watched Cardiff when I was a young boy. I also watched Newport. If I wasn’t playing games on Saturday, for Newport YMCA or Pill, I would jump on a train and get to watch Cardiff.

The great thing for me is I wasn’t a great player – I managed at the lower level and managed to be successful and that gives great hope to everyone else.

I have read loads of books on Napoleon. For him to come from nothing and then lead his country, that fascinated me. It doesn’t matter what you think of him. He did it.

My dad was a steelworker but I had the opportunity to become a player. A very average player but a player all the same. But I worked my socks off to make something of myself.

We push experience aside and forget about people far too quickly.

I have been animated all my life on the bench.

Look, you are going to get criticism if things don’t go well.

My teams have always been very hard-working and competitive.

It’s no good me talking about my future. I don’t determine my future, other people do.

Ever since I started professional football at 15 there was always that togetherness and solidarity in the dressing room – it is a sanctuary. When I started football everyone believed it.

That’s management. It’s a social job as much as anything else, finding out what people are like, seeing through them. There have been good players and not-so-good players who I have moved along because I thought there would be a clash of character.

I think the biggest thing in the Premier League is the divide between the people who have and the people who haven’t.

Everything about the Premier League is wonderful, even when you get beat.

The important thing is not just getting good players in, but getting good characters and the right types of player in.

It must be a nightmare for football managers’ wives, putting up with us.

Discipline and respect and hard work are not bad words. I expect that from everybody – especially the players who are in fortunate and very lucky positions.

I’ve come from a working class background in South Wales with eight of us in a three bedroom house. Four boys in one bed, two sisters in the other bedroom and mum and dad in the box room.

Every time I take my teams abroad, the players always behave.

Respect for people who employ you, respect for people you work with, respect for the job you’re doing is enormous for me. I adhere to those principles.

If you’re a manager in the Premier League the pressure is enormous because if you don’t win matches, you’ll not be there very long.

Players live a different life. They’ve been blessed. They live in a bubble and they live in a world where they get everything really. They’ve become film stars.

When you lose a game of football, you can still be a winner by taking it on the chin and getting on with it.

There are players like that – you know they have been rascals, and that you can bring them in, give them a new environment and get a length of time out of them, but they will always return to type. You can get something out of them, then you have to get rid of them.

I can remember being at Gillingham playing in the fourth division ringing up other people I knew at clubs to see what team they would play, if they had injuries. Or you would ring a press man you knew in that area.

I have my grumpy days. The players will tell you that. But you have to be positive because you have to lift them.

I think football is a reflection on life and society and you have to move with the times. I’ve moved with the times, I’ve had to.

My biggest concern for the country is that many kids are now just looking at their parents who’ve lived on benefit and think that’s the norm. It’s so sad.

English football, especially Premier League football, is different to most football on the continent.

I keep saying, and I’ve said it to the players, what happens in a dressing room stays in a dressing room, whether that’s with me and a player, whether it’s two players together, whether it’s the coaching staff and the players. I just think it’s almost a sacred environment and that trust in that area is unbreakable.

I accept that in life and football you have good times and bad, and it’s how you deal with it.

Everybody wants things now. If I hadn’t been given the time at Stoke, or at other clubs earlier in my career, I don’t think I would have ever been successful.

If a top four job came along, I don’t think people will look at Tony Pulis to do that.

I’ve actually carried the Olympic torch through Stoke-on-Trent.

I hope Darren Moore is a good manager, when he was my captain at Portsmouth, he could lead battleships out of water, he was that good.

Middlesbrough took a lot out of me, it was enjoyable but draining.

You get spits and spats all the time in football.

We know you have good runs and bad runs. The big thing you learn in the Premiership is you have to take it on the chin. You have learn how to lose without getting too down and too despondent. You have to box that up, put it to one side and make sure everyone who counts stays positive.

When you lose a game you still get as disappointed, 24 years on. Losing a game of football, even when you have played well, kills you.

People have a perception of you and that’s very difficult to change.

I don’t like fiction, I like reading proper history.

Every job I’ve had I feel lucky to have had. Of all the family, I was the lucky one. I’ve been very fortunate. I don’t regret anything, I don’t crave anything.

Stoke-on-Trent – forget about the football club, or the people at the football club, and the supporters – Stoke-on-Trent is a wonderful place.

There are loads of good principles we’ve lost as a nation. Discipline. Organisation. Respect. I was brought up with those.

When things go wrong it is magnified 10 times more in the Premier League.

When things aren’t right, I can overreact because of the fear of losing everything. The insecurity drives me, and helps keep my feet on the ground.

I find rowing very boring, I’ve got to be honest.

I’ve been happy at all the clubs I’ve been at.

I enjoy the gym. I think if you’re fit in your body, you’re fit in your mind. So I get up most mornings and I’m first there usually. I stay in there for an hour, an hour and a half, do my work, shower and then I have a nice breakfast.

What frustrates me more than anything is that I push on so far and people become complacent, lose that bit of edge, and it’s very difficult to keep driving people on. That’s probably the greatest fault of mine: I expect everybody to be like me.

The more you achieve, the more people want.

What really, really matters is the dressing room and the people on the training ground being very, very focused in what we are trying to achieve on and off the ball.

I’ve mellowed with my age.

You have to accept criticism.