Dave Kitson has revealed a spectacular story from his time at Stoke City, where he attacked manager Tony Pulis with a pair of scissors, ahead of a crucial Premier League game v Tottenham.
Speaking on talkSPORT2, he revealed the extent of his anger and how the attack came about, ahead of a 3-1 defeat to Spurs:
“Tony Pulis and I don’t see eye-to-eye. Never have. He had left me on the bench for some reason or another. I can’t remember what it was.
“We went out onto the pitch as subs. You go out, you warm up, you come back in and the first-team are already getting changed, having their team talk and then they go out. As they come out the subs walk in.
“So, I was out on the pitch and Mark O’Connor came out and said, ‘look, the gaffer wants you all in’. No worries, so we all walk in.
“Pulis said to me: ‘what are you doing out there? Blah, blah, blah’. At Tottenham, where we were playing, the changing rooms extend right back because it’s an old stadium. They are long and narrow. You go right back past the changing rooms, you pass the physio rooms, you pass the showers and then you get to the toilets at the back where I had gone for a number one.
“I heard this ‘it’s all always the same guys, it’s always the same guys’ and I thought, ‘I’m not having that’. So I turned around, came back and I said: ‘who are you talking to?’ This is right before the Spurs game, an evening game and he says: ‘I’m talking to you’.
“Anyway, the week before we had played against Chelsea and I had crossed the ball, Petr Cech had caught it, thrown it out and Frank Lampard scored in the last minute and we lost 2-1. My fault completely, I should have just kept the ball in the corner.
“So I basically had a go at [Pulis]. I lost the plot and I was saying to him ‘who are you talking to?’ and he went ‘I’m talking to you, you’re the guy who gets the ball in the last minute and costs us the game’.
“So I said: ‘It’s taken you a week to bring that up and now you’re choosing to bring it up before the Spurs game, when we’re just about to go out’.
“Everyone has stopped getting changed and they’re all looking in.
“In the middle of the changing room is a physio table with a pair of scissors on it and I picked up this pair of scissors and went for him.
“The whole changing room just jumped up and wrestled me to the floor.
“So, we went out and we were 3-0 down in about 10 minutes. I’m not proud of it but I just wasn’t going to let him get away with it because I was always first in and last out and didn’t appreciate that kind of accusation.”
