Sunday 30 April 2017 19:20, UK
Tony Pulis has praised a Sky Sports study which compared the total transfer cost of Premier League squads with their current points haul.
The West Brom boss has taken his side to an impressive eighth place this season, and the study revealed their 44 points earned this term has cost just £1.47m in transfer fees per point. That works out as the best value per point in the Premier League.
In contrast, Manchester United's points haul has come at a cost of almost £8m per point in transfer spending, a league high.
Indeed, United's £93.25m outlay on Paul Pogba last summer exceeds the value of squads at Hull (£56.1m), Burnley (£56.4m), Middlesbrough (£57.7m, West Brom (£64.5m), Bournemouth (£66.5m), Swansea (£71.8m), Watford (£73.7m) and Sunderland (£82.1m).
Pulis says the Sky Sports study is a good indication of which managers are overachieving with the resources at their disposal.
"There's never a sense of understanding in what you've got, the material you've got to work with," he said. "That's never taken into account.
"If you lose games, no one ever looks at the situation and analyses it to that depth. So it's nice that the table has come out and shown there are lots of managers out there who might not win as many games as the top clubs but if you actually put it into perspective they're not doing a bad job.
It's nice that the table has come out and shown there are lots of managers out there who might not win as many games as the top clubs but if you actually put it into perspective they're not doing a bad job.
"That's not just myself, but people at the smaller clubs who over achieve year after year after year. And there's a lot of top managers - and the list shows that as well - who underachieve year after year after year, but still win more games than we do."
Discussing the contrast between West Brom's points-per-pound record and United's, Pulis said: "Our aim every year is different.
"They have to win titles and trophies, we have to stay in the Premier League and hopefully get a good cup run. The top six or seven clubs are getting further and further away from the rest of us. If there's not enormous amounts of money to invest then that will continue to happen.
"You will get the odd year, the odd occasion where it's tipped up the other side but the majority of the time the people who have the money to spend will get the best players."
