Should Chelsea struggle at Stoke City on Saturday, Carlo Ancelotti may have cause to blame computerised war games. Tony Pulis's squad are big on bonding but these days it is frequently fuelled by cyberspace interaction rather than alcohol. Several Stoke players are hooked on the fierce jousting involved in taking each other on at Gears of War and Call of Duty.
"We regularly play war games online at night," explains Liam Lawrence, the team's right-winger. "It sounds stupid but we communicate just like we do on the pitch. We talk online at night in exactly the same way. Even the old ones get involved, it's a good laugh and something to do when you have to stay in at night and be good."
As a litany of fallen opponents will testify, military-style strategy and Stoke are certainly far from strangers. Moreover in Pulis they boast a manager unusually adept at seeing the bigger picture.
Thinking typically long-term, Pulis obtained his first coaching badge at the age of 19 and his Uefa A licence at 21. When, two years later, building societies refused the then modestly remunerated but newly engaged Bristol Rovers centre-back a mortgage, he responded with some smart lateral thinking.
Determined to begin married life as a home owner, Pulis astounded team-mates by doing his research and securing himself a lucrative season-long move to Happy Valley of Hong Kong. One year later he and his bride had a new house.
There was a similar sense of "mission accomplished" about Stoke's ultimately surprisingly comfortable maiden Premier League campaign last season. Once again the strategist in Pulis reasoned that if his proud record of 17 years in management without a single relegation was to be extended some slightly left-field think would need to be deployed.
Cue Rory – the Delapidator – Delap and his goal-prefacing long throws amid some distinctly pragmatic tactics. This binary blueprint upset many last term – West Brom's official programme detailed Stoke's "medieval cannon fire" – but, if Pulis is not fazed by ruffling rivals' feathers, he knows that, to keep wrong-footing opponents, his side must evolve.
As befits a manager who quoted Abraham Lincoln to a vexed Arsène Wenger, Pulis knows his history and has arguably learned from the mixed experiences of two other long-ball disciples, John Beck at Cambridge United and Sam Allardyce at Bolton Wanderers. While Beck's failure to build on his early successes by refusing to diversify tactically surely stunted his once promising career, Allardyce's adornment of a brutally functional Bolton ensemble with the myriad talents of Youri Djorkaeff, Jay-Jay Okocha, Nicolas Anelka et al saw Blackburn's current manager shortlisted for the England job.
Although still an important weapon in Stoke's armoury, the efficacy of Delap's throws waned appreciably during the second half of last season as teams fathomed out that such Exocets could be partially countered by ensuring their goalkeeper's view was not obstructed.
A modified strategy seemed called for and Pulis duly confounded many by not only becoming the first Stoke manager to sign a player directly from South American football – namely the gifted young Uruguayan Diego Arismendi, late of Nacional – this summer but relieving Middlesbrough of Tuncay Sanli.
While he has already accommodated the richly talented, slightly unorthodox forward Ricardo Fuller within Stoke's fairly rigid tactical framework – where room has also been found for Matthew Etherington's dribbling skills – Tuncay's acquisition ups the tactical ante.
The Turkey international – arguably at his best floating freely between midfield and attack – is so unusual that several managers, including Aston Villa's Martin O'Neill, passed up the chance to sign him because they feared their teams would have to be built around the one-time King of Fenerbahce. No one doubts Tuncay's skill, vision and work rate but all too often he was on a different wavelength from his Boro team-mates and it will be fascinating to see whether Pulis permits him to persist as an essentially free spirit or insists he concentrates on one or two specialisms.
The essential unanswered question is whether Tuncay, Arismendi, Fuller and the improving Glenn Whelan will be allowed to play improvisational football "with the handbrake off" or, à la Allardyce at Bolton, instead afford his stars fairly narrow remits within a rigid system?
Only time will tell but Pulis certainly possesses the knack of spotting and developing latent talents within individuals – few Sunderland fans detected Delap's penchant for long throws during his undistinguished stint on Wearside – while binding them to a ferocious team ethic.
"The great thing is our lads all socialise together," Stoke's manager explains. "They have group nights out, we involve everybody in absolutely everything and it all carries over on to the pitch."
War games included.
