Premier League Stats Review: Pulis starting to work his magic with Baggies

Tony Pulis has been quick to make West Brom tough to beat against bottom-half sides

Stats guru Andrew Atherley says the new West Brom manager is building a record similar to last season's with Crystal Palace and has a good chance of getting a result at Burnley on Sunday...

West Brom are already starting to resemble a Tony Pulis team and, as such, they make plenty of appeal away to Burnley in Sunday's crunch match near the bottom of the Premier League table.

Pulis won Manager of the Year after keeping Crystal Palace in the Premier League last season and that phenomenal achievement convinced West Brom he was the man to steer them to safety.

The early signs are that Pulis is following his tried-and-trusted blueprint for survival. Last season with Palace he put the emphasis on a mean approach to matches against other teams near the bottom of the table and it proved highly effective.

Pulis's side compiled an impressive W8 D4 L1 record against teams that finished in the bottom half of the table (Palace eventually came out as the best of that group, finishing 11th in the overall standings).

The sole defeat came in Pulis's first game in charge (1-0 away to Norwich) - an obvious conclusion to draw is that his methods had not yet taken hold at that early stage.

Palace's strong record under Pulis had other notable aspects. First and foremost it was founded on stopping the opposition scoring - they kept eight clean sheets in those 13 matches against bottom-half teams, which almost inevitably led to a glut of low-scoring games (10 of the 13 had under 2.5 goals).

For the most part, Pulis was less successful against the better teams, chiefly because it was harder to stop them from scoring. Palace lost nine out of 13 against top-half teams under him, although there were some notable results (a 1-0 home win over Chelsea and a 3-3 home draw with Liverpool that played a major part in ruining the title hopes of both clubs).

The same patterns appear to be taking shape at West Brom, both in last week's 3-0 home defeat by Tottenham (easily the best side they have faced under Pulis) and in their earlier results against lesser teams.

West Brom have played two sides from the bottom half of the table, taking a 1-0 home win over Hull and a goalless draw away to Everton. Once again, therefore, Pulis is making sure his team are hard to score against and that is leading to clean sheets for West Brom and a strong chance of under 2.5 goals.

Sunday's match at Burnley falls into the same category and the Pulis factor points to several options.

In terms of the match result West Brom are 3.185/40 for the win and around 2.15n/a on draw no bet, which looks solid in view of the fact that Pulis (at Palace last season and so far with the Baggies) has lost only one out of 15 against bottom-half teams (the record on the road is W3 D4 L1).

Under 2.5 goals is available at 1.664/6, while a West Brom clean sheet is likely to be around 3.259/4.

With Palace and West Brom combined, eight of Pulis's nine wins against bottom-half teams have been to nil - that outcome is likely to be close to 5.04/1 against Burnley.

Any of those bets are well supported by the stats if the similarities between Pulis's records with Palace and West Brom persist, but the most solid is the draw no bet.

Over the next month the way to go with Pulis's side against bottom-half opponents is to back them for home wins and on the draw no bet in away games - a strategy that would have paid handsome dividends with Palace in the second half of last season.

Starting with Burnley, West Brom have three such opponents in the next three and a half weeks (the others are Sunderland and Aston Villa, also away).

Recommended Bet
Back West Brom on Draw No Bet v Burnley @ 2.15n/a (1pt)

2014/15 P/L

Staked: 58 pts
Returned: 61.07 pts
P/L: +3.07 pts