Beer & Blackpool beach was how British players bonded - Pulis

Hearing about Tottenham's team-bonding trip to Marbella last week made me think about the similar methods I used as a manager to build team morale.

While some things have changed from my day, the idea behind taking your players away to a new environment where they will benefit from spending a lot of time together has not.

I wrote a few weeks ago about how Spurs boss Roberto de Zerbi needed time with his players on the training pitch after their poor start to the season, to bed them in and build a proper team.

He will have used their warm-weather camp in southern Spain to do more of that, getting to know what is almost a new squad of players.

With De Zerbi being cut from Italian cloth, I am sure the players will have been working mornings and afternoons to drill in the manager's principles in respect to team shape and direction.

But that's not the only purpose of taking them away. De Zerbi will also have been able to monitor the different personalities within the group away from the grass.

If the trip has worked then, as well as getting them ready to face Coventry on Monday night, I am sure he will now, for the first time, understand the strengths and weaknesses of each individual, on and off the field.

'I found out a lot about them - good and bad'

A few eyebrows were raised about Spurs going away so early in the season but it makes perfect sense to me when you consider so many new players arrived there this summer, with several signings late in the transfer window.

When I was Stoke manager, I often took my teams away to Austria in our pre-season for the same reasons De Zerbi and Spurs have gone to Spain.

Those trips were set up not only to test the players' fitness, but also to see how the group worked together.

I have always believed in building a family togetherness within the dressing room, with a commitment from every player to the benefit of the team.

The extreme tests that we asked our players to do over that 10-day period brought out an inner determination to fulfil the tasks given them and, in my opinion, helped us through some tough times early on in our Premier League campaigns.

Watching the lads slowly bond together on the training pitch and at meal times was great to see and I found out a lot about all of them, good and bad.

Yes, I have to admit one or two players were short of the character we wanted and needed, but they didn't last long and left with no bad feelings on my side.

Beer & Blackpool beach - what British players classed as bonding sessions

Today, whether it's pre-season or a winter break, most Premier League clubs who take their players away go first-class and enjoy great hotels, great facilities and wonderful food.

Wherever the team bus goes, it is followed by an even bigger bus with all the non-playing staff on it.

It is very different to my experiences in my early years as a player, when we would be taken to Blackpool for three days' pre-season training.

Again, the idea was to bring the lads closer together, but that happened in a different way than today's professionals are used to.

We stayed in a guest house with three-quarter beds that we all shared - that certainly brought us closer together! - then trained on the beach each morning, doing our running sessions on the sand.

Then we played seven-a-side games in the afternoon on a local park pitch, after clearing the dog muck off first.

In the evenings, we were allowed out for a few beers, with no time stipulated for our return - apart from having to be downstairs and ready to hit the beach again at 8am the next morning.

That is where things have changed most of all, right through football, during the past few years. In the 1970s and 80s, there was a massive drinking culture right through the leagues - just listen to the stories that came out of clubs as big as Liverpool, Manchester United or Arsenal, when they had teams who not only dominated English football but the European game too.

In my early years of management, the bonding I've been talking about used to happen right through the season through the lads meeting in pubs after games and after training on week days as well.

Winter breaks were rare and, rather than for a training camp, the only time most players I knew went to Spain was at the end of the season when more alcohol would be consumed.

That was what British players classed as bonding sessions and, as I've written about before, even the ones at the top level were much more connected to normal society, rather than living in an eternal bubble.