Swansea's Ashley Williams wary of Tony Pulis factor at West Brom

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Tony Pulis has managed Stoke, Crystal Palace and West Brom in the top flightImage source, Getty Images
Image caption,

Tony Pulis has managed Stoke, Crystal Palace and West Brom in the top flight

Swansea City captain Ashley Williams expects West Bromwich Albion to be harder to beat because Tony Pulis is now manager there.

Pulis, 57, led Crystal Palace to safety last season and he replaced Alan Irvine at the Hawthorns on 1 January.

The Baggies, have lost one of the seven games since the Welshman took charge.

"Tony Pulis is there now and we all know what sort of manager he is, so we know it's going to be a tough game," Williams said.

"What you know with his sides is that they're going to be organised and very difficult to beat.

"I'm sure he's trying to implement that there, and it's about us trying to break them down.

"But they're at home so they should come out a little bit and hopefully it's a good game."

Swansea eased to a 3-0 win over West Brom at the Liberty Stadium in August during Irvine's seven month spell in charge at the Hawthorns.

Victory over the Baggies saw Swansea briefly move to the top of the Premier League, although they are currently ninth in the table.

The Swans recovered from going a goal down at home to Sunderland on Saturday to rescue a draw, thanks to Ki Sung-yueng.

That resulted followed a 1-0 win at high-flying Southampton the previous weekend.

Image source, Getty Images
Image caption,

Centre-back Ashley Williams has made almost 300 appearances for Swansea

"I thought we showed great character to come back from being a goal down, especially when you're not playing as well as you want to," Williams said.

"Second half we played a lot better and finally Ki got the goal, so credit to the team for that."

Holding midfielder Jack Cork signed from Saints in the January transfer window and Williams praised his debut against Sunderland.

"I thought he did really well, another one who put a shift in, covered a lot of ground and was fully committed to the team," Williams said.

"He seems a really nice guy and started brilliantly.

"It's nice to hear that people want to come to the team, maybe we've struggled with that before with it being a smaller club, being in Wales and a lot of people want to live in bigger cities.

"But it just shows the work that we've all done here... that we can attract players to the club and Jack is a good British player. I think he'll have a good career here."

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