West Bromwich Albion sacked Tony Pulis on Monday.
Paul Merson has named the manager who would be ideal for West Bromwich Albion… but there is one problem.
West Brom sacked Tony Pulis on Monday, after they slipped to within a point of the Premier League’s bottom three.
Pulis found the Baggies in exactly the same scenario three years ago, and led them to 13th-, 14th- and 10th-place finishes.
Speaking to Sky Sports’ The Debate this week, Merson suggested West Brom would be better off with the Welshman in charge.
Asked if their next appointment will be made with marketing in mind, given the Baggies’ Chinese ownership, the former Walsall manager replied: “No they need to stay up. And at the moment if Tony Pulis wasn’t the manager and you needed to get someone in now in a relegation battle, you’d take Tony Pulis.
“They need to be careful. If you’d have said to me sitting here now, who is going to finish above who at the end of the season – West Brom or Huddersfield and Tony Pulis is in charge (of West Brom), I’d take West Brom all day long, because I know at the end of the day he will get it right. I ain’t sure now.
“I worry about West Brom, because for all the good players they’ve got it’s not a young team, and as the season goes on it will fade. I think it was a bad move I really do.”
Former Crystal Palace bosses Alan Pardew and Sam Allardyce are the current bookies’ favourites for Pulis’ old post.
Pardew worked with West Brom technical director Nick Hammond at Reading, while Allardyce is a former Baggies player and coach.
Whoever lands the role will be Guochuan Lai’s first appointment since seizing control at the Hawthorns in 2016.
Who do you want as Pulis’ successor at West Bromwich Albion?
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