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.

Stoke at home - a win for football

In truth, a comfortable win in the end. 3 well-worked goals with Gervinho influential in all 3. After dominating the first, egregious defending allowed Stoke to equalise. Again, Gervinho had a part to play. Defending a Stoke free-kick, he was isolated on the left-hand side of the box with 2 Stoke players to mark. He called to his team mates which only resulted in him getting the ‘hand’ instead of a hand from Chamakh. Gervinho then failed to track the deep run from Shawcross who headed across goal unchallenged. A second header at the far post and the ball fell to Crouch who tucked away from 1 metre out. Poor defending but the free-kick that preceded it was highly debatable. Koscielny rose like ‘un saumon’ and hung in the air to win a fine defensive header against Crouch. Inexplicably, Lee Mason (remember him last season from Everton at home and Blackpool away) blew for a free-kick.

As expected, the only threat from Stoke was the long throw-in from Delap. It is almost as if Stoke have adopted the American Football approach of special teams as all Delap does is take long throws – thankfully, they can’t follow the model completely and keep him on the sideline until required though I expect Pulis will suggest this to the FA. In any case, Stoke’s ‘line-out practice’ failed to materialise in a direct goal threat as the Gooners’ defence dealt with the aerial threat no doubt helped by  having an additional centre-half as Djourou was at right-back.

Delap was substituted in the second-half and with him went Stoke’s creativity. A cliché, I know, but worth repeating nevertheless.

A good win. RvP took the media plaudits by coming off the bench to score twice, But my MotM was Gervinho. Arsene should produce a DVD of his contribution and give it to Theo so he can find out what he should be doing!