Ex-Premier League boss says Holloway can 'inspire anyone' after Town turnaround

Yahoo

13-05-2025

Former Stoke City manager Tony Pulis praised the motivational skills of Ian Holloway after he turned Swindon Town around this season.
Having arrived in late October with Swindon mired in a relegation battle, Holloway managed to turn the campaign around and move Town closer to the playoffs than the bottom two by the end of the year with a top-half finish.
Pulis and Holloway have known each other since they came through at Bristol Rovers together and have been close friends ever since.
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The 67-year-old has not been in management since a stint at Sheffield Wednesday in 2020, but had very accomplished spells in the Premier League with Stoke City, Crystal Palace, and West Bromwich Albion in the 2010s.
During a recent interview on many topics across English football, Pulis was asked about his assessment of the work Holloway has done since returning from a four-year hiatus.
Speaking to OLBG, he said: 'Ollie will inspire anyone. He's that type of person, he's that type of fellow. He's infectious. He just gets things done, and he gets things going, and he's done fantastically.
'It's lovely to see an old-fashioned manager go in and be successful. Ollie, he's a lot younger than me. But yeah, it's really pleasing [to see what he has done].
'It's close to his home, he's close to his family, which is important to Ian. Now I am really, really pleased for him and pleased for the football club.
'I first met Ian when, I think, he was 14 years of age, he was carrying sticks across the park at Eastfield as a schoolboy. He was so bubbly and so enthusiastic, and his attitude to life, his parents, his dad and his mum were lovely, lovely people.
'He's godfather to Anthony, my son. Yeah, he gets a tick from me.'
This has been a sentiment shared by much of the Swindon squad on how Holloway has been able to improve them since his arrival.
Ollie Clarke said: 'All the way back to the start of the year, when we were still new as a group, we still had the belief that we could do something.
'Then the manager has improved us tenfold in terms of our mentality, our organisation, and [knowledge of] how to win games of football.
'It is just a shame that it took us a while to get our feet under the table and get the wins that we needed to get ourselves away from danger.'