Wednesday 22 May 2013 10:37, UK
Stoke City have confirmed manager Tony Pulis has left the Premier League club by mutual consent with immediate effect.
Now Etherington hopes Stoke bring in the correct candidate to replace Pulis. "We will wait and see who the club decide to bring in," he said. "The chairman is a very sensible man, very level-headed and knows his football and he will definitely bring in the right person for Stoke." Supporters became disenchanted with poor form and performances in the second half of the season which saw the Potters win just three of 19 league matches and briefly flirt with the prospect of relegation. Pulis was often criticised for his side's over-physical approach to the game and a reliance on long-ball tactics. But Etherington said there were understandable reasons behind his methods and that the manager had tried to change as best he could. "We have definitely got better players at the club than we had when I joined in the first season in the Premier League," he added. "The manager has a way he wants to play. First and foremost he wants us to be defensively very sound. "You have to be solid or there is a big chance you will get relegated. That was his main priority, which was fair enough. "There were times when we weren't pretty to watch but he had us well-drilled and that shouldn't be taken away from the job the manager has done. "The gaffer said in pre-season he wanted the way we played to evolve and we started off relatively well. "When it went bad and we weren't picking up results we maybe went back to the old ways. "You can say it worked because it kept us up but we went back to basics to grind out results. "The way we finished this season was poor, we all know that and the fans weren't happy and rightly so. "We had the quality in the squad to finish higher this year. The players need to look at ourselves because we didn't perform."
