Peter Crouch on his time at Stoke City under Tony Pulis is absolute gold

Peter Crouch is without question a Premier League legend.

Sure, the lanky striker didn’t score anywhere near as many goals as Wayne Rooney, Alan Shearer or Thierry Henry, nor does he possess a goals-per-game ratio like Sergio Aguero.

But Crouch was still a top-quality operator in his pomp and excelled at a number of, shall we say, smaller Premier League clubs.

The 41-year-old delivered the goods at Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur too, but was also hugely effective at Southampton, Portsmouth and – in particular – Stoke City.

At times during his eight years at Stoke between 2011 and 2019, Crouch really was a lethal footballing weapon, especially when working under Tony Pulis.

Pulis’ style of play was tailor-made for Crouch and for quite some time, Stoke were an absolute nightmare to play against.

On the Potters’ home patch, it was never a shock to see one of the big boys come unstuck.

And Crouch believes if prime Barcelona had visited Stoke when Pulis was in charge, the likes of Lionel Messi, Andres Iniesta and Xavi Hernandez would have tasted defeat.

While a guest on the BT Sport Cole Cast, the former England international spoke about his time at the Bet365 Stadium (formerly known as the Britannia) with Joe Cole – and he even labelled Arsenal as the team’s “home banker”.

"If Messi and Iniesta came to the Brittania at that time I reckon we could have turned them over.""We trained in the middle of the pitch before we played Arsenal just to cut it all up."@petercrouch reminiscing about his time at Stoke is absolutely incredible!