HAS any sports coach or team been as wrongly vilified in the past few years as Tony Pulis and Stoke City?

Even after a thumping 5-0 win at Wembley that took the Potters to a first FA Cup final, many continue to bang the same drum, the rhythmic bores repeating the same mantra again and again.

“That’s not how football should be played,” they wail. “Thugs, anti-football thugs, it’s got no place in the game.

“He’s the one who wants them to play like that, it’s like something out of the 70s. Long ball football went out with the dinosaurs, Stoke are a disgrace.”

We’ve been hearing the same nonsense for three years.

For the second time in three seasons Pulis should be manager of the year and rather than pouring scorn on Stoke City, we should be celebrating everything they stand for as a club, as a Premier League success story and as a positive influence in their community.

Let’s take each and every criticism bit by bit, firstly tackling this absurd notion that there is something wrong with Stoke’s style of football, that they are somehow playing a brand of the game that has become unacceptable.

At what point in the past few years did it become the case that the wonderful style adopted by Spain, Barcelona and, if you want a less successful version, Arsenal become the only way to play football?

Has endless hours of Youtube clips of samba stars and too many prawn sandwiches at half time dulled our senses so much that we can’t remember some great ‘efficient’ sides gone by.

Don Revie’s Leeds United could play. They could also mix it up and dominate their opponents with mental superiority and efficient football, relying on working the ball quickly to their better players.

Ditto Manchester United this season. If they are playing a beautiful game, I’ve not seen it and they will be Premier League champions.

There is nothing wrong with high tempo, in your face, pressing football, which is what Stoke play.

They aren’t long ball merchants as they were when they came into the Premier League, Pulis evolving as his personnel got better.

Out and out width and pace in Jermaine Pennant and the in-form Matthew Etherington makes them exciting to watch – as at Wembley – whereas they like strikers with a strong physique and an ability to do a bit of everything.

It’s a recipe that works for them and I am sick of pointing out that the supposed anti-football merchants play a more appealing style than Birmingham, Blackburn and dare I say Manchester City, usually found with three holding midfielders in a typically Italian set-up.

If there is nothing wrong or indeed unique about the way Stoke play, it must be because they are ‘thugs’ that people seem to despise them.

Yet, an unfortunate tackle on Aaron Ramsey aside, I am struggling to think of any other incident which has led to the reputation they unfairly have.

There isn’t a Premier League club who doesn’t have a player capable of a moment of madness. Stoke aren’t bottom of the fair play league and they don’t deserve that stigma either.

However, of all the risible, ridiculous and absurd ways to knock Stoke, undoubtedly my favourite is when they are slaughtered for utilising Rory Delap’s long throw.

In what parallel universe did using an asset become a problem? As regular readers know, I support Spurs and I can say with certainty that this season Tottenham have played some of the best, most attractive football I’ve seen in 20-years as a fan.

What Spurs have also done is try and exploit Gareth Bale’s amazing long throw whenever the opportunity arises. If it’s good enough for the player of the year, why not Delap?

Not only are Stoke far from being a team to criticise, as a club they are actually a template for the right way to do things.

With such hysteria over foreign owners in the Premier League and a culture of debt, leading to horrible situations like the one at Chelsea – where the club is built on almost £800 million of debt to a single man – why aren’t we celebrating Stoke?

Owned by local businessman Peter Coates and with wage and transfer budgets that are never over extended. The club is kept in the black. There is no reliance on parachute payments, no prospect of jeopardising their future.

In the truest sense of the word, Stoke are a community club.

And now, after three seasons of growing, succeeding where so many others have failed and establishing themselves as a Premier League club, with full houses at the Britannia Stadium and some of the most vociferous and passionate fans in the land, they are heading to an FA Cup final.

If filling their Wembley allocation (Bolton didn’t), playing superb football in one of their biggest ever games (Bolton didn’t) and scoring five goals without reply isn’t enough to convince the sceptics, I guess nothing ever will be.

People in this area are extremely proud of Tony Pulis and have every right to be. But the whole Premier League should be pleased for Stoke. In a world where money is changing our game at an alarming rate, we should all admire the Stoke way. They deserve their big day and they have earned it.

Finally, I just wanted to take the time to praise another manager with Newport connections who has already earned some silverware this season, former County striker Garry Shephard.

Shephard has worked under severe financial strain at Merthyr in the past few seasons. The Martyrs were on the brink of ceasing to exist. They were liquidated and started again, dropping down three tiers as result.

Not only did Shephard – incidentally my first ever Argus interviewee – remain at the club he convinced most of his playing personnel to do likewise.

The result is the club storming to the Western League Division One title and getting ready to move back into their spiritual home of Penydarren Park after a year in exile.

It’s been a wonderful achievement from a good guy and if anyone can understand what Merthyr have been through and the relief on coming out the other side, it’s Newport County fans.

So congratulations Garry, here’s to back-to-back promotions.