Albion favourite warns: Don't mess with Pulis

The former Albion centre-half also knows what it is like to be on the receiving end of Tony Pulis.

Butters played under the Stoke manager at Gillingham and for the Seagulls the last time they visited the Britannia Stadium.

He has a pretty good idea what Gus Poyet’s table-toppers can expect in the fifth round of the FA Cup in the Potteries on Saturday.

Butters had three seasons with Pulis at Gillingham in the late 1990s. The 41-year-old, now working for Albion’s community department, discovered straight away what he had let himself in for after Pulis bought him from Portsmouth for £150,000.

He used to travel into training with another ex-Seagull, Ian Chapman. “The very first day someone was in dispute with him (Pulis) for some reason after a game,” Butters said. “He told us to go for a warm-up and he went for a little walk with him behind one of the sheds at the training ground. We all thought he was going to have a fight.

“I knew straight away then he would be very hands-on and strong and not somebody to mess with. About a week later the fella who he was in disagreement with left the club.

“The training was hard and he did what he does now. He got a lot of people in who were quite tall and played quite direct but were really fit. We used to grind teams down.

“I was the fittest I have ever been in my life. It was hard work but if you did well for him he would look after you.

“In all the time I was there I think he only had one day off and that was for his brother’s funeral. Something similar happened this season when his mum died and he came running back at half-time.

“He doesn’t like being away from it. He took all the training sessions. He lives for football.”

Butters has moved into management himself with Wessex League club Winchester. He can still identify with the methods of Pulis in the side Albion will be facing in the last 16.

“Looking at the Stoke team now, he has similar sort of players to those he had at Gillingham, big and tall centre-halves, big forwards. He has also got Rory Delap to chuck balls into the box.

“Certain clubs don’t like to play that way but he always had that philosophy. That was the way to get out of divisions and he stuck to it.

“At the beginning of the season he would tell all of the defenders, midfielders and forwards to get together and watch all the goals that had been scored the previous season.

“Defenders had to count how many goals were scored from one ball, midfielders from three passes or more and forwards five passes or more.

“We all totted them up and the most goals scored were by the goalkeeper kicking it and somebody flicking it on. There were literally three times as many as all the other goals, taking into account set pieces as well.

“He obviously knew and worked it out percentage wise. We used to do an hour every Friday just on set pieces. At a corner it might take 20 goes to get it right but everybody knew what they were doing, where they had to stand and who was blocking who. It was really thorough.

“If it is constantly coming in and everybody is well drilled it’s nigh on impossible to defend against. From long throws he will have someone on the near post flicking them on, others timing their runs off of it.

“Even if you clear the first ball it comes straight back in again. As the opposition you end up thinking about things you shouldn’t really think about.

“You don’t really want to kick the ball out anywhere in the final third, because you know someone has got a long throw which is as good as a corner.

“You are trying to make your clearances go further and sometimes the ball goes out and sometimes it stays in. It just changes your whole game.”

Opponents have tried different ways of combating Stoke’s style in an attempt to avoid Delapidation. They have included relying on the goalkeeper, conceding a corner in preference to a throw-in and leaving more players up front so that the penalty box is less congested.

“I did that against Havant and Waterlooville the other day,” Butters said. “When we were defending corners we left at least three players up, so they had to have three or four marking them.

“I think the keeper has a big part to play. You have got to make sure he is on his toes and, if he can come for things, all the better.

“I would be getting into the ref as well, saying they are trying to block the goalie, doing this, doing that, but it is very difficult.

“Albion are certainly going to have to be on their mettle because Stoke will play on any weakness. Maybe it would be a good idea to get into their heads a little bit, stick four or five up defending corners just to see what they do.

“You have got to go there and expect it to be relentless. You can try and upset it but Pulis is quite canny, he will have an answer to most things.”

Peter Brezovan, Albion’s 6ft 6ins Slovakian, will be in goal again in place of first choice Casper Ankergren, as has been the case throughout the FA Cup run.

Brezovan will be hoping to do better against Stoke than Alan Blayney and Wayne Henderson when the sides last met in the Championship five seasons ago.

Butters was in the team beaten 3-0 at the Britannia by Johan Boskamp’s Stoke and 5-1 on the final day of the campaign at Withdean, when they had already been relegated under Mark McGhee.

That performance rankles to this day with many Albion fans, Butters believes unfairly.

“Everyone goes on about that game but we were already relegated,” he said. “We had a last get-together during that week because a lot of players were getting released.

“Everyone was down because they didn’t know about their contracts. There was just a bad atmosphere at the club. People were saying it was the worst game they had ever seen and they were fuming but they have got to understand that at the time nobody knew if they would be staying.

“Some people had already been told they weren’t getting contracts. We didn’t feel we should have been in that situation. We didn’t replace the players that had been sold and that was when I think Mark McGhee gave up a little bit.

“It’s hard enough trying to stay in that division but when you have got one hand tied behind your back and you are not replacing players it makes it doubly hard.”