Reluctantly, I may agree with gary. I'd love to be principled and say I'd rather play the Swansea Way in the Championship than the Pulis Way in the Premier League. But there are a few things that stop me from doing that.
1. The Swansea Way is dead. Or at least in severe hibernation. We don't have the management, or more worryingly now, the squad to play that way. So to me, that has already gone.
2. The club has worked so hard to get to the Premier League and stay there, yet we are still not the size of a Premier League club. Call me shallow, but I'm not ready to give up those bragging rights yet, nor the fixtures against the best clubs in the country. In the words of the Tenth Doctor (David Tennant)... I don't want to go...
3. The current squad may be competitive in the Championship. Except we wouldn't be there with the current squad. Abraham would go back to Chelsea anyway, Mawson would want to stay in the Premier League, Bony would be a crippling financial burden in that league. BTW it speaks volumes that I can't really say any more stand-out players about the squad - I said it at the time, but selling Sigurdsson and Llorente sealed our relegation before a ball was kicked.
4. So there is a real possibility of ending up in League One in 18 months time. What an absolute waste that would be. It's happened to bigger clubs than us, so don't think it couldn't happen here.
For me there is a question of whether Pulis could get us out of trouble, given his last 6 months with West Brom. It might be worse to play Pulis-ball and fail. Would Allardyce be more of a guarantee? Maybe. Would Koeman get us out of trouble and play attractive football? Maybe. There are no guarantees.