Stoke away

Things started very well. An excellent pre-match chicken balti pie – good sage pastry with just enough moistness and an excellent meaty, spicy filling with a mixture of breast and leg to give a wonderful oral experience.

My feelings are about the match are ambiguous – the positive of a second clean sheet tempered by the typical domination of possession but little to show in terms of chances created.

I thought we had a good first 30 minutes with Cazorla particularly active and it seemed a real possibility that the goals would come – at either end, in fact, as Stoke had one or two dangerous breaks.

After that ‘normal service’ was resumed as Stoke settled for a point and we struggled to break them down. This continued into the 2^nd half with only a fluffed attempt by Diaby (ok the ball came to him unexpectedly but he reacted like it was a time bomb rather than the leather/plastic orb), a good turn and shot by Ramsey and a speculative effort by Giroud that would have been a goal of the season contender had it gone in but is now remembered for the fact that he didn’t pass to Ramsey. Personally, I would rather see players trying things.

Subs didn’t really change the situation – Theo still can’t take players on and still doesn’t make himself available for the pass and Ramsay still struggles physically.

Back up the M6 again at the weekend. Will be interesting to see how the team perform in a game in which the defence should be under more pressure as Liverpool will surely show more attacking intent than ‘red stripes’ x 2. This could open up the game and afford us more attacking space. We’ll see!


PS: just been reminded of Giroud's scissor-kick attempt from a corner in the 2nd half - now categorised as 'should have headed it'!

Shoulda, woulda, coulda - if my aunt had cojones, she'd be my uncle!

Finally, a word about the ref, Lee Mason. Apart from a mad two minutes when he seemed to forget himself and let all kinds of tackles go, he had a reasonably good game.