The manager cuts continued even with the English Premier League season coming to an end, with Stoke City confirming the departure of Tony Pulis, and with it ending a seven-year reign with the Potters.

Pulis has done exceedingly well to keep Stoke well out of reach of the relegation zone in most seasons, but the club's flirting with the drop this campaign, and the fact that the style of play showed no signs of progress, were seen as major factors in the club agreeing to "mutually" end the association.

"Stoke City and Tony Pulis confirm that they have mutually agreed that Tony will leave the club with immediate effect," the Premier League side said in the briefest of statements.

Pulis, after taking over for a second spell in 2006, got the club promoted to the Premier League in 2008 and has kept them in the top flight with relative ease since then.

However, the biggest criticism levelled at Pulis has been his style of play, with the negative tactics and the overly physical nature catching the ire of not just opposition clubs, but fans as well, including some of the club's own.

Stoke were in serious danger of being relegated from the Premier League this season, with only a handful of games remaining, before a couple of wins ensured their stay for yet another season; but speculation still remained over Pulis' future and it comes as no surprise that his time at the Britannia Stadium has come to an end.

Pulis would have been the second longest serving manager in the Premier League currently, had he stayed, after Arsene Wenger of Arsenal, with Sir Alex Ferguson retiring and David Moyes leaving Everton to take over at Manchester United.

Stoke winger Matthew Etherington was disappointed to see Pulis leave the club.

"I've spoken to a few of the other boys and they're shocked as well, it's hit us," he told talkSPORT. "You have to be careful what you wish for in football sometimes.

"You look at Charlton under Alan Curbishley and look where they are now. Hopefully it won't go that way for us, hopefully we'll get someone in who will push us on and make us into a top-10 team.

"If you look at where Stoke were when he first came in -- mid-table in the Championship -- you can't argue he's done a fantastic job."

The biggest problem for a new manager coming in will be to instill his ethos into the side, which is so used to playing the Pulis way; indeed a lot of the players have been bought to suit the now former manager's style and Etherington came to the defence of Pulis' tactics.

"First and foremost, he wanted us to be defensively very sound," he added. "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.

"We have definitely got better players at the club than we had when I joined in the first season in the Premier League.

"The gaffer said in preseason 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. But if you look at where we finished in the last few seasons, you can't really argue."

Outgoing Chelsea manager Rafa Benitez and former Blues boss Roberto Di Matteo are the early favorites to take over at Stoke for next season.