ARSENE Wenger broke the golden rule for any manager – don't whinge after your team has been beaten.

However strong your argument, it will only come over as sour grapes.

Sadly for Arsene, his argument wasn't very strong anyway.

I agreed with him so far when he spoke about the bravery of the player being tackled because I always said that Jimmy Greenhoff was braver than me after taking all those tackles from behind and still wanting the ball.

But then Arsene went too far by throwing mud at Stoke City players when there was no justification on the evidence before everyone's eyes.

I know Arsene pretty well and I know he will soon be thinking 'I shouldn't have said that'.

Unfortunately, I don't think he will come out and say so publicly.

But never mind, for Tony Pulis will be rubbing his hands at what he's heard this week.

No matter how much he is offended by the particular comments, the nature of them shows how worried people are by Stoke City's form.

People don't get uptight if they are not worried about you and there will be those now thinking that Stoke aren't an automatic pick for the bottom three.

Tony was also right to put some pressure on Mike Riley ahead of the Wigan game by publicly declaring his hope that tomorrow's official is not influenced by what he's heard from Wenger.

Tony will gee up his players by telling them to put Wenger's comments firmly out of their mind because they have done nothing wrong.

It will be a different ball game for Stoke tomorrow because Wigan are big, strong and physical, but they can also play a bit.

I saw them batter Chelsea during a 1-0 home defeat a few weeks back, so I was surprised to see them lose four on the bounce recently.

But they will be back on track now because a late winner at Portsmouth last week will do wonders for them mentally after that four-match run.

I bumped into Steve Bruce at the West Bromwich Albion against Hull City match a fortnight ago and I believed him when he said they were playing better than those four straight defeats suggested.

We know all about Amr Zaki after his eight goals so far, but Wilson Palacios is one hell of a player from what I have seen of him.

Emile Heskey is back to his best and an England player again, Jason Koumas can conjure something from nothing and Lee Cattermole is the kind of bite-yer-legs midfielder Arsenal could have done with last week.

I don't think Tony will change much, if anything, except to tell his troops to imagine Wigan are managed by a certain Frenchman.