Quotes from Tony Pulis

If a top four job came along, I don't think people will look at Tony Pulis to do that.

There are too many people coming out of school and heading into a life of nothing. They go straight on the dole or into crime.

I've actually carried the Olympic torch through Stoke-on-Trent.

I have this restlessness. I'm relentless to do things. My wife will say I'm an absolute nightmare.

I always think the best players come from the areas where there are loads of chimney pots, where they have been brought up a little bit tougher than the others.

I can remember being at Gillingham playing in the fourth division ringing up other people I knew at clubs to see what team they would play, if they had injuries. Or you would ring a press man you knew in that area.

When things aren't right, I can overreact because of the fear of losing everything. The insecurity drives me, and helps keep my feet on the ground.

What really, really matters is the dressing room and the people on the training ground being very, very focused in what we are trying to achieve on and off the ball.

I'm very determined, single-minded, just ask the wife.

Social media is good in some ways, for me to Skype my son and grandchildren every day in America is wonderful. But then you've got other things on the Internet which are absolutely dreadful. It's poisonous and there should be greater control of that. You're not going to change it, though, so you have to work with it.

We all get knocked down in life, the big thing is getting back up.

Someone asked me 'What's the biggest thing you'll take out of the Premier League?' I said that you can't relax. I think you can go from having a great run of games - you can go four, five, six unbeaten - and turn a corner and go into a run of seven or eight games without winning. That's how difficult it is for the so-called smaller clubs.

My dad was a steelworker but I had the opportunity to become a player. A very average player but a player all the same. But I worked my socks off to make something of myself.

I've always been bloody single minded, which is probably why I've been in the game so long.

When I was a player, if you weren't in the team you would be knocking on the manager's door, saying, 'Well, if I can't play here, I'd like to play somewhere else.'

The more you achieve, the more people want.

What frustrates me more than anything is that I push on so far and people become complacent, lose that bit of edge, and it's very difficult to keep driving people on. That's probably the greatest fault of mine: I expect everybody to be like me.

I enjoy the gym. I think if you're fit in your body, you're fit in your mind. So I get up most mornings and I'm first there usually. I stay in there for an hour, an hour and a half, do my work, shower and then I have a nice breakfast.

I have read loads of books on Napoleon. For him to come from nothing and then lead his country, that fascinated me. It doesn't matter what you think of him. He did it.

I've come from a fantastic, working class area and to actually have the fortune to be given that opportunity to get out of that has never left me. I was determined from the first day I left to make the most of it and that will never stop.

There is no point going man-to-man with a player of Messi's ability. He is so clever he would drag your player all over the pitch and still find a way to destroy you, probably exploiting the hole you've left by assigning someone to that role.

I keep saying, and I've said it to the players, what happens in a dressing room stays in a dressing room, whether that's with me and a player, whether it's two players together, whether it's the coaching staff and the players. I just think it's almost a sacred environment and that trust in that area is unbreakable.

We know you have good runs and bad runs. The big thing you learn in the Premiership is you have to take it on the chin. You have learn how to lose without getting too down and too despondent. You have to box that up, put it to one side and make sure everyone who counts stays positive.

My biggest concern for the country is that many kids are now just looking at their parents who've lived on benefit and think that's the norm. It's so sad.