Stoke: Spotlight on Ollie

Saturday's match against the Seasiders will be one match that Tony Pulis will be looking forward to as it'll be a chance to catch up with his old friend and playing colleague, Ian Holloway.

The outspoken, but always entertaining, Blackpool manager played with Pulis at Bristol Rovers in the early 1980's and they became close friends. He's godfather to Anthony Pulis and is even said to have done his share of baby-sitting for the Pulis family.

It's certainly interesting to see that Blackpool have confounded the pundits so far in much the same way that the Potters did in their first season in the Premier League and you have to wonder if our Tone has been passing on his survival tips to his former baby-sitter.

I'm sure that any friendship will be put to one side for 90 minutes on Saturday and Holloway will not have forgotten that his last league trip to the Brit was definitely not one of his career highlights.

Stoke's final match in the Championship was that goalless draw against Leicester, then managed by Holloway. That point may have been enough to earn us promotion, but it wasn't enough to stop the Foxes going in the opposite direction and down into League 1 and Holloway being left without a job.

We'll just be hoping that it's Tony Pulis that's again looking smug after the game as he opens that bottle of red wine with the visiting manager.

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