That's just more speculation based on nothing whatsoever. Pulis put a huge amount into that pre-season preparation, much more that Pardew's little jolly, which suggested he was probably expecting to be here at the start of the season. The only likely reason, that carries any credibility, is a disagreement on the transfer policy, the detail of which, if true, is unknown. What a pity that the board didn't have a similar disagreement with Pardew.

Thanks to Tonykaos for the link to the judgement. I have now got all the answers I wanted when I started this thread.

The contract required that to get his bonus Pulis had to keep us up, and stay in the job until the 31st August, at which point he would get the £2m (minus tax and NI, that comes to about £950k in his pocket).

He asked for the money early (on the 8th Aug) so he could buy some land for his family, and said he was happy to stay at Palace. Pulis got the money on the 12th and resigned on the 13th. There never was any land deal, and he never intended to stay.

When Palace paid Pulis, he got about £950k, the taxman was given about £1.2m directly by Palace, so Pulis never saw the whole £2m.

The Premier League Arbitrators found in Palaces favour both key areas of dispute (i.e that he broke his contract and lied). The Courts agree with the Arbitrators, and Pulis can't challenge that.

Pulis is liable to pay back the £950k he pocketed, PLUS he has to pay Palace the £1.2m that they paid to the taxman for him, EVEN THOUGH Pulis never got that money! The reason for this is that Palace can't be certain HMRC will refund them in these circumstances. Ouch!

Pulis will have to pay his own teams legal fees of course, and since it was held that he left Palace to join another club he has to pay damages to Palace of agreed amount of £1.5 million, which I guess was the buyout clause in his contract.

In total, Pulis was ordered to pay Palace a sum of £3,776,000 in damages, then find the money for the lawyers fees.

Wow!

What now seems clear as well is that had he just sat still and said nothing he could have collected the money and left Palace two weeks later, although it may be that any club he joined would have had to pay Palace 1.5m for him at that time.

Unbelievable. All that mucking about so that he could get £950k a few weeks early, and now he's in the hole for £3.77m plus all the fees.

HOWEVER....

I wonder whether WBA will pay the £1.5m 'buyout' clause for him? I suppose that depends on whether WBA agreed to that when he took the job there. I have seen other posts on here suggesting that WBA specifically waited until the relevant date where they didn't have to pay Palace if they employed Pulis, but it may have been something Pulis was able to get them to do when he signed on anyway. We'll probably never know.

I also guess that if Pulis had to refund Palace the whole £2m, including the amount Palace gave to HMRC in tax, Pulis would be within his rights to try and claim that back from HMRC, or at least to ask Palace to do so and then give him his £1.2m back. It seems illogical that tax is still payable now that there has been no bonus payment made. So perhaps he'll get that £1.2m back. It reads as if Palace made an offer of that type during the hearing.

So if he gets the £1.2m from HMRC (via CPFC or otherwise) and if WBA agreed to pay the £1.5m, he's still got to pay £1m to Palace, but seeing as that's effectively a refund of the money Palace gave him, he may not be out of pocket very much at all, he would simply have missed out on the money he earned by keeping us up. In fact, if WBA gave him a big signing on fee, or higher basic wages than CPFC, he may even be in the black on the whole thing, though of course we simply don't know those details. It would explain why he seems so calm though.

So, though we know Pulis owes Palace at least £3.77m, we don't know how much of a blow this actually is to him, and probably never will.

What is for sure is that Palace are not out of pocket.

Again, thanks to TonyKaos for the link.

Edited by TheBigToePunt (10 Mar 2017 6.05pm)

Bigtoepunt,

I believe you have a couple of things wrong.

West Brom recruited Pulis in January after leaving us in August. That sounds like they and he were desperate. They could've got him earlier without any repercussions but they didn't because he was out of their league but by January he had to take a job.

CPFC agreed in court to help Pulis try to recover the tax paid to HMRC.

Why is all the interest on the date of the HPM heated players meeting and not the content of the meeting.It is alledged that the reason it was heated was that Parish was trying to wriggle out of paying the players their full bonus payment- the same players that had just kept the club in the premier league against all the odds..If this is true it explains why Pulis wanted out and also shows "saviour' Parish in a completely different light