Match report
Full time: Stoke 1-4 Arsenal
Peep peep! A happy day for Arsenal, who played well and won extremely well on a ground where they rarely have much joy. They are now one point behind Liverpool with two games to go; Liverpool’s visit to West Ham tomorrow will probably decide who finishes fourth. Thanks for your company, goodnight!
90+3 min “‘Delicious’ can be applied to apple pie, not to crosses or goals,” says David Mitchell. “‘But it’s so creative and original’...no it isn’t. Some football journalist used it about 8 years ago, and since then, every other football journalist copied him and can’t stop. ‘Delicious’ should be banned from all football reports. It’s awful and cringeworthy.”
Cheers David. Keep it up.
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90+2 min This will be Arsene Wenger’s first league win away to a team managed by Mark Hughes.
90+1 min “’This is pulsating stuff, and it’s come from nowhere,’” says Nic Clarke. “Well not really. It came from Mike Dean’s poor refereeing and Stoke cheating... Why the reluctance to call out the obvious?”
Because the change in mood occurred after the substitutions and before the dodgy goal? That or the systematic anti-Arsenal bias that is at the core of the Guardian’s editorial policy.
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90 min Four minutes.
89 min Crouch is booked for a desperate lunge at Xhaka. It looked slightly worse than it was, because of the size of his pins and the co-ordination issues caused thereby, but it was a bad one and a clear yellow card.
89 min “Wenger has it easy,” says Gary Naylor. “‘Mike Dean’ is trending after Crouch’s goal, and you can imagine what that’s like.”
It’s time for Mike Dean to blow the whistle. He’s taken this game as far as he can.
87 min This has been a comfortable win for Arsenal, apart from that manic nine minutes between the goals from Crouch and Sanchez.
85 min Cameron’s crisp low volley from 15 yards is smartly saved by Cech, down to his right.
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84 min “I’m not sure there’s anything specific about Arsenal that has so irked Charlie Adam,” says Matt Dony. “It’s just that he’s been a bit directionless and lacked direction since Gareth Bale left the league.”
Do they have a bit of the old previous?
83 min Danny Welbeck replaces Mesut Ozil, who has had a very good day. His goal, to make it 2-0, was delicious. Theo Walcott also comes on for Olivier Giroud.
82 min Sobhi replaces Arnautovic, who was injured when Holding fouled him a few minutes ago.
GOAL! Stoke 1-4 Arsenal (Giroud 80)
Arsenal make it four! Ozil on the right opening the game up with a fine pass infield to Ramsey, who had burst forward from midfield. He ran from centre to right, tracked by Johnson, before drilling a fine low cross on the turn. Giroud got to it ahead of the defence to score his second tap-in of the match.
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79 min “Stoke’s efforts to make to the next level hinge on finding a 20-goals-a-season centre forward,” says Phil Podolsky. “Diouf is clearly not that player and they’ve had rotten luck with Bony and Berahino so far. In this position it really can take years for the curse to lift.”
Indeed. I think their 20-a-season man was Peter Thorne in 2000.
78 min Ramsey almost makes it 4-1 with an excellent run and shot that brings a fine save from Butland. Holding is then booked for flattening Arnautovic, who has had the beating of him in the last 20 minutes.
77 min Sanchez does come off, to be replaced by home favourite Aaron Ramsey. Sanchez is a magnificent force of nature. Most players wouldn’t even try to score while waiting to go off injured; even fewer would do so.
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I think he will need to come off anyway, but he will do so having restored Arsenal’s two-goal lead. He received a square pass from Bellerin in an inside-right position, ran into the area and hit a low shot that deflected off Shawcross and curled into the far corner.
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GOAL! Stoke 1-3 Arsenal (Sanchez 76)
So much for being injured!
74 min Sanchez wants to come off. He has what looks like a thigh injury, though Arsenal are not getting a substitute ready.
73 min “Hey Rob,” says JR in Illinois. “In this dark and scary era we have moved into I have become extremely vigilant in sniffing out fake news™. Therefore, for the sole purpose of providing the truth™ to all your readers, I am compelled to point out that Giroud’s tap-in was from 2.75 yards, not 4. You can tell because of the reference of the six-yard box line in combination with the cut of the grass. Now that Ozil goal, that was from 4 yards.”
71 min Berahino shoots tamely at Cech from distance. Meanwhile Mustafi is aggrieved about a clash with Pieters at a set piece. He thinks he was elbowed deliberately in the face.
70 min Arsenal were so composed and serene for an hour. They aren’t composed now. This is pulsating stuff, and it’s come from nowhere.
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It was handball! Oh my. Arnautovic beat Holding on the left again and crossed to the near post, where Crouch got in front of Cech and seemed to flick a smart header into the net. The replays showed it was a clear handball, however, and Arsene Wenger is having a minor meltdown on the touchline as a result.
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GOAL! Stoke 1-2 Arsenal (Crouch 67)
Crouchigol!
65 min It’s a game of corners at the moment. Giroud wins one for Arsenal, from which nothing happens.
64 min “I feel compelled to point out that Stoke’s enforcer-in-chief is actually Charlie Adam (no “s”), from the half-time comment,” says Tom Adams. “I don’t want people thinking he may be related to me if it can be avoided.”|
63 min Another corner for Stoke, their fourth in a couple of minutes. It’s half cleared and headed back in to Martins Indi, whose header on the turn from close range is palmed over by the leaping Cech.
62 min A succession of corners for Stoke. The third is flapped away under considerable pressure by Cech to give Arsenal’s defence a breather.
61 min A double change for Stoke: Peter Crouch and Saido Berahino replace Diouf and Allen.
60 min Diouf heads wide from four yards! Arnautovic teased Holding on the left and moved away from him before whacking a cross into the six-yard box. Diouf, who got ahead of the ball, had to dive almost backwards and ended up heading it back across goal and just wide of the near post.
58 min Giroud takes one in the face from Arsenal’s old friend Ryan Shawcross. I don’t think it was intentional.
This is the most gorgeous goal from Arsenal. Ozil wandered infield from the left, gave the ball to Sanchez and kept running forward. Sanchez waited, waited a bit more and then guided a straight through pass of immaculate precision and weight that bisected two covering Stoke defenders inside the area. Ozil took it on the run, waited for Butland to sit down and teased the ball high into the net. A brilliant goal. The pass from Sanchez was stunning, because it travelled 15 or 20 yards and he had almost no margin for error. Any more weight and Butland would have got it; any less and one of the two defenders would have cut it out.
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GOAL! Stoke 0-2 Arsenal (Ozil 55)
Now that is how to play football.
55 min This is a good spell for Arsenal, who have got their passing groove back after a slow start to the half.
52 min Stoke’s proud record of finishing ninth in every season since 2013 will be under serious threat if they lose this game.
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50 min Holding has had another assured game, albeit in comfortable circumstances thus far. It’s threatening to get tougher; Stoke have looked more likely to create something in the first five minutes of the second half than they did throughout the first 45.
48 min This is better from Stoke, who are breaking into sprints all over the pitch and playing with much greater intent. Shaqiri’s cross deflects wickedly towards Diouf, who goes over in the box after a collision with Monreal. There was nothing in that.
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46 min Peep peep! Arsenal begin the second half. If you like to picture these things, they are passing from left to right on the television screen in front of me.
“I see Charlie Adams is available to step on some Arsenal ankles late doors,” writes Adrian de la Touche. “Was it ever discovered what so irked him about Arsenal players who ran away from him?”
Half-time reading
One from the archives, but with happy memories for Stoke and Arsenal fans.
Half time: Stoke 0-1 Arsenal
Olivier Giroud’s goal means that Arsenal lead deservedly against a subdued Stoke. See you in 10 minutes for the second half.
The goal was made by Bellerin, who scooted onto Coquelin’s excellent through ball and played a perfect square pass that gave Giroud a tap-in from four yards.
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GOAL! Stoke 0-1 Arsenal (Giroud 42)
Olivier Giroud gives Arsenal the lead!
40 min Arsenal are starting to get a little frustrated by the scoreline. For all their possession Butland has only had one save to make, and that was from a set-piece.
38 min It’s a more even contest now, with Stoke showing a bit of purpose on the counter-attack. And it is still 0-0.
37 min Whelan’s dangerous cross from the right is expertly defended by the stretching Mustafi. Wouldn’t have mattered, as Arnautovic was offside, but Mustafi didn’t know that.
35 min Shaqiri’s attempted far-post curler nicks off the toe of Koscielny and spins wide for a corner. Nothing happens.
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34 min Giroud robs Johnson, who drags him over. Sanchez picks up the loose ball, moves towards the box and drills a fast low shot into the side netting at the near post. I think Butland had it covered.
32 min “Unless Jose manages to land that protest plane on the pitch then nothing will exceed the existential drama of Mahrez’s self-kick penalty,” says Ian Copestake. “It confirmed that the gods have both a cruel sense of humour and premier league season tickets.”
Meh, that’s old news. Denis Irwin was doing it back in 2000, and getting away with it. (I would link to said incident against Anderlecht, but we are no longer allowed to link to unofficial sites for legal reasons.)
31 min Allen plays a give-and-go with Arnautovic and wriggles clear off a couple of defenders in the area before Koscielny clears.
29 min Arnautovic curls the free-kick a few yards over the bar. It was a decent effort but Cech wasn’t particularly alarmed.
28 min Sanchez’s inswinging cross is confidently taken by Butland, who flings it out to Arnatouvic. Stoke work the ball from left to right to Shaqiri, who shuffles back infield past three players before he is chopped down by Mustafi. That’s a yellow card and a free-kick 25 yards from goal.
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26 min Glenn Whelan appraises Coquelin of his existence via the medium of the crunching tackle. Stoke could probably do with more of that.
25 min The good news for Stoke is: it’s still 0-0. See also, the bad news for Arsenal.
24 min The Women’s FA Cup final is done and dusted: Manchester City lead 3-0 after barely half an hour, with Carli Lloyd getting the third.
21 min It’s all Arsenal, just as it was five minutes ago. The match is almost weirdly one-sided, and it’s increasingly clear that Stoke are going to win 1-0 with a goal off Mame Biram’s Diouf belly button.
19 min “Under Labour, all ‘Wenger out’ protests will be nationalised,” sniffs Ian Copestake.
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17 min Monreal hits the post! He has been a constant threat going forward in this match. After good work from Coquelin, Bellerin’s lofted cross skimmed off the head of a defender in the six-yard box and reached Monreal beyond the far post. He stretched to head the ball onto the near post, and Ozil was tackled as he attempted to put the loose ball away.
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16 min Stoke’s first decent attack leads to a mild penalty appeal when Arnautovic’s cross hits a defender at close-range. Even if it did hit the hand - and I don’t know that it did - there was no intent.
13 min Ozil clips a brilliant diagonal pass over the defence to Monreal, who gets the wrong side of Johnson but runs the ball out of play. It wasn’t the easiest ball to control as it travelled a long way.
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11 min Diouf tracks back to tackle Xhaka, allowing Stoke to get out of their half for the first time in a while. It’s very one-sided and, as Alan Smith says on Sky, there’s a strange lack of intensity about Stoke.
9 min What a fine save from Butland! Ozil’s outswinging corner from the left was looped towards the far post by the head of Mustafi, and Butland stretched a long way to tip it over.
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8 min “Truly depressing to hear the local fans booing Arsenal,” begins Charles Antaki, “presumably for Ramsey’s effrontery in attacking Shawcross’s boot with his shin all those years ago ago, and having the metropolitan snootiness to go off with a supposedly broken leg.”
7 min Arsenal win the first corner. It’s played short to Sanchez, whose driven cross is headed away by Diouf.
6 min Arsenal are completely dominating possession, albeit in the sterile-domination zone at this stage.
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5 min This has been a smooth, confident start from Arsenal. Mustafi drives a brilliant angled pass over the top for Sanchez, who controls it on the stretch with his bicep and is flagged offside anyway. Great pass though.
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3 min A long spell of possession for Arsenal, most of it accompanied by boos, ends when Sanchez has his pocket picked by Shawcross. Diouf rumbles forward on a solo break until he is tackled by Mustafi (I think).
1 min Peep peep! Stoke kick off from left to right. They are in red-and-white stripes; Arsenal are in their very, very, very, very, very navy blue away strip.
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Football news (sort of) OJ: Made in America is on BBC4 this week, starting tomorrow night. It is magnificent, so you should watch it.
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This is a good stat on Sky Sports. Teams managed by Mark Hughes have hosted Arsenal eight time in the Premier League, with five wins and three draws. Wenger out!
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It’s been another busy day in the Premier League, with Swansea winning at Sunderland to move closer to safety. You can get all the Premier League match reports here. And if you want to follow the Women’s FA Cup final with our resident MBM genius, Scott Murray, you can do so here.
Team news
Stoke (4-3-3) Butland; Johnson, Shawcross, Martins Indi, Pieters; Cameron, Allen, Whelan; Shaqiri, Diouf, Arnautovic.
Substitutes: Grant, Muniesa, Adam, Sobhi, Berahino, Walters, Crouch.
Arsenal (3-4-2-1) Cech; Holding, Mustafi, Koscielny; Bellerin, Coquelin, Xhaka, Monreal; Ozil, Sanchez; Giroud.
Substitutes: Ospina, Gabriel, Elneny, Ramsey, Iwobi, Welbeck, Walcott.
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Preamble
Hello. Arsene Wenger is so far behind the times that watching him has become a painful experience. He’s decent, dignified, principled and romantic - values that have little place in modern society, never mind modern football. In 2017, being behind the times should be a virtue, but Wenger has been subject to increasingly unpleasant abuse from myopic, entitled brats with an allergy to nuance and a thundering lack of perspective. Or, to give them their other name, a minority of Arsenal followers.
Wenger deserves criticism. All professionals do. There is, however, a pretty clear distinction between criticism and ridicule or abuse. Let’s be clear about this: Arsene Wenger is one of the greatest managers in British football history, who has given Arsenal fans some of the most euphoric moments of their lives. He sacrificed the best years of his career to do the right thing by Arsenal. He is also a bloody good human being; better than you, better than me. The ongoing attempt to hound him out of a job is pathetic.
The only good thing about it is that it’s likely to be counter-productive: Wenger is so stubborn, for richer and poorer, that the more people bleat about the sheer misery of finishing as low as fifth for the first time in 21 years, the more likely he is to dig his heels in and sign a new contract.
None of this is to say Wenger should definitely be at Arsenal next season. His future is a legitimate discussion, with compelling arguments on both sides. But that’s what it should be - a discussion, not the shouting match it has become. There are so many interesting aspects of this situation we could be talking about. Why football fans prefer melodrama to stability; why Wenger seems willing to die for his financial and aesthetic principles; whether this most unselfish of managers is now leaning towards self-preservation. Instead we’re reduced to banners, planes and Arsenal Fan TV. This bullying - and that’s what it is, let’s not pretend otherwise - will not stand. The media are just as guilty. We are the ones who legitimise these cranks and trolls. I’m doing it now FFS!
The Wenger story highlights one of the biggest problems with football and the world: an emergency shortage of empathy. You probably know the old Theodore Roosevelt quote.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
These days it’s not the man in the arena who counts. It’s the cold and timid soul in his bedroom, wearing his wacky underpants, calling Wenger a tosser on social media. What does that old sod Roosevelt know anyway? He’s not even on Twitter!
Most of us would do well to survive a week in Wenger’s job without cracking. He’s been doing it for 21 years, almost all of the time with dignity, humour and intelligence. That doesn’t grant immunity from criticism, but it should warrant a sliver of basic respect and gratitude - and a bit of sentiment. There’s no room for sentiment in sport? That’s the kind of thing that would fall out of Donald Trump’s mouth. You might as well say there’s no room for sentiment in life.
The people who want Wenger gone will probably weep when he leaves. Humans have a remarkable and distasteful ability to manipulate their own conscience, and so the more extreme dissenters will see no contradiction in celebrating 1998, 2002 and 2004 as they push him out the door. You can’t have it both ways. If Wenger is forced out, there will always be an asterisk against his time at Arsenal because of the way it ended. Not for the dissenters, maybe, but definitely for Wenger. That is far more important.
Some people say Wenger should shut up and like it because of how much he earns, as if his salary has some kind of abuse-weighting. This is patently garbage. Not far behind is the suggestion that fans pay their money so they should be able to say what they want. Why not extend this? You could set up some medieval stocks in the club shop and stick Wenger in there for an hour after every defeat, five quid a pop.
Something like that wouldn’t look so out of place at the moment. We are having to learn all over again what constitutes civilised behaviour, this time in a digital world, and by heaven we are making a mess of it. That primitive digital behaviour is now influencing how we behave in real life. The Wenger situation is a small example of what a mess the world is in, both run by and in thrall to a minority of cranks, trolls and narcissists.
Imagine slagging off an all-time-great manager like that, eh? Yes, yes, I know. Please don’t confront me with my failures; I have not forgotten them. I have written some desperate rubbish, particularly about Sir Alex Ferguson in 2006. That was a diabolical, childish piece of writing. Actually it wasn’t a piece of writing; it was a piece of ranting, one from which I’ll never escape. It shames me, as it should.
I don’t mind getting things wrong. Most people thought Ferguson was finished, even his own ghostwriter, and if you reject the security of received wisdom then there are times you’ll make a spectacular fool of yourself. Also, <Trumpet> I've got a lot more right than wrong over the years</Trumpet>. The issue was the appalling tone, and the arrogant conviction that only the ignorant moron can summon. Who the hell did I think I was? Eleven years later, I don’t recognise the person who wrote it. I do know he’d have benefitted significantly from a smack in the mouth.
It can get a bit boring when somebody preaches with the evangelical zeal of the recovering moron, and I apologise for that, but it’s the same rudeness, the same arrogant, ignorant certainty, that makes what is happening at Arsenal so distasteful. Once you realise that we’re all going to die, everything makes more sense. Nobody will lie on their deathbed reflecting proudly on the time they persecuted a 67-year-old man who previously infused their life with glory and joy.
Empathy, not eejitry. That’s the way forward. I hope desperately that Wenger wins the Premier League before he retires. It’s hard to see that happening. His big chances were in 2015-16 and then in the summer of 2016, when he apparently declined to match Chelsea’s wage offer to N’Golo Kante. The FA Cup thus remains his best chance of a trophy, as it has been since 2004. That lends a poignant innocence to this Wenger quote, from 1997, about cup specialists Chelsea: “People say I now have to win something and point at the way Ruud Gullit took the FA Cup to Chelsea. Well, for me, the only thing of real value is the championship.”
Even if Arsenal win their third FA Cup in four years, it won’t appease the venomous minority. Everybody knows the war is over, everybody knows the good guy’s lost. It’s hard to see a happy ending, whether he goes in the summer or stays for two more years. But this is no longer about whether he should go; it’s about how he should go. After all he has done for Arsenal and for English football, the very least he deserves is a respectful ending.
Arsenal visit Stoke today, kick off is at 5.30pm.
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