There was a time when you could say that any club who appoints Tony Pulis knows what they're getting.Pulis has, thanks to his work at Stoke, Crystal Palace and now West Brom, become a byword for frill-free stability. The football would not be aesthetically pleasing, it would be physical and solid but he would make your previously underperforming team better.
Most of all, he was a guarantee of survival, a surefire way of banking 40 points and ensuring those sweet Premier League pounds kept rolling in. It was a bargain a struggling club had to make: nothing pretty to watch, but consistency and reliability.