With his baseball cap and tracksuit, Crystal Palace manager Tony Pulis is an unlikely trendsetter, but his exploits this season have made him the name on everyone's lips.

On the day the 56-year-old Welshman was appointed manager last November, Palace were six points from safety at the foot of the Premier League table, having collected only four points from their opening 11 fixtures.

Five months on, their 3-2 victory at high-flying Everton on Wednesday took them to the 40-point mark synonymous with survival, 10 points above the relegation zone with four games still to play.

If only matches that have taken place since Pulis arrived at Selhurst Park were taken into account, the south London club would be eighth in the table.

"The manager has come in and done a brilliant job," says Palace winger Jason Puncheon, one of several players to have been revitalised since Pulis's arrival.

"I can't thank him enough, and he's proved plenty of people wrong."

Pulis turned previous club Stoke City into the most rugged side in the country, leading them to promotion from the Championship in 2008 and overseeing five consecutive top-14 finishes among the elite.

They reached the FA Cup final in 2011, losing to Manchester City, but after a brush with relegation last season, chairman Peter Coates elected to take the club in a new direction.

Pulis admitted that he was "disappointed" by the manner of his departure, but his appointment by Palace gave him an opportunity to showcase his aptitude for achieving success with meagre resources.

Under his predecessor Ian Holloway, sacked in late October despite having guided Palace to promotion last season, the team had conceded 17 goals in their first eight matches, winning one game and losing seven.

Pulis immediately set about instilling discipline into his side's defending and having kept only one clean sheet in the 11 games prior to his arrival, they have since recorded 10 shut-outs in 23 matches.

Palace, like Pulis's Stoke, are now one of the league's most well-drilled and hard-working teams, but they also play with an attacking verve seemingly at odds with their manager's reputation as a pragmatist.

Moroccan striker Marouane Chamakh, a flop at Arsenal, has flourished in a new withdrawn role, while Puncheon and fellow winger Yannick Bolasie have both excelled in recent weeks.

Pulis also demonstrated his mastery of the transfer market in January by bringing in five new players on deadline day.

Of the five, centre-back Scott Dann, midfielder Joe Ledley, and Puncheon -- whose loan move from Southampton was made permanent -- have all become ever-presents.

"I have a different type of group to the one I had at Stoke," Pulis said after the win at Everton, which saw Palace register a fourth consecutive top-flight win for the first time since 1994.

"We play through the middle more, we have very quick players, and they have different strengths. We have decided on the best way to play and found a system that suits them."

Pulis says that keeping Palace up will be "right up there" with his best moments as a manager, and the country's football fans have been quick to applaud his achievements.

His name was trending on Twitter in the United Kingdom on Thursday and more often than not, when it appeared in a tweet it was accompanied by four telling words: "manager of the year".