Premier League: Stoke City 2, Arsenal 1

by Martin Spinks

YOU know the footballing world is slightly off its axis when Arsenal fail to turn on the style and Stoke fans fail to turn on the Styles.

News of Stoke City's increasingly impressive home form is less earth shattering for the wider world, however, as a trip to the Britannia Stadium is now commanding the respect of even the Premier League's grandest reputations.

That's now four wins out of six at HQ – including three in the space of 13 days – as supporters and players unite like never before in the common cause of Premier League survival.

Not even the presence of referee Rob Styles – a figure of fun and hate for Stoke supporters with long memories – could distract them from the greater goal of joining forces with Andy Griffin's tackling or Abdoulaye Faye's ice-cold stare in mentally disturbing the opposition.

It was all too much for an Arsenal side clearly lacking the bottle and desire to bounce back from the traumas of blowing a late two-goal lead against Tottenham three days earlier.

Their fatally-weak defending from Rory Delap's ever-menacing throws was merely the most blatant evidence of a group of players bereft of the character, confidence and spirit underpinning the home side's winning credentials.

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Arsenal's pre-match huddle gave way to something of a love-in as they all hugged one another with apparent trepidation, while the sight of four visiting players to Stoke's one wearing woollen mittens was another telling insight into their appetite for the battle awaiting them.

Emmanuel Adebayor characterised their chronic lack of focus as he moaned and groaned throughout much of an afternoon that may even have been cut short had Styles been officiating down to his usual standards when the Arsenal striker raised a reckless boot in the first half.

But their lack of discipline was to surface with truly damaging consequences late on when substitute Robin van Persie was rightly red-carded for barging petulantly and forcefully into Thomas Sorensen to knock the Danish goalkeeper clean off his feet.

Poor old Sorensen is beginning to take these attacks personally after only just recovering from the pleasurable experience of feeling a set of Tottenham studs play noughts and crosses over his face a fortnight earlier.

But Arsenal's visible shortcomings – they have now lost as many league games as they lost in the whole of last season – does not detract one jot from the momentous feelings such a Stoke victory should inspire among their faithful.

Any victory over the Gunners chips away at the mental scars left for the older generation by those back-to-back FA Cup semi-final defeats nearly 40 years ago, while Saturday's success must surely rank as Stoke's best league victory for more than 23 years on what was also the sixth anniversary of Tony Pulis first taking residence in the City dugout for a somewhat depressing 4-2 defeat at Walsall.

And the auction price for the Britannia's outgoing scoreboard must have acquired another zero on the end now that its bulbs have lit up the words "Stoke 2, Arsenal 1."

Saturday's fixture was always destined to be a clash of styles, but the gulf was not as wide or as embarrassing as some might have supposed.

Not just because Arsenal were clearly out-of-sorts, but also because Stoke played more football than their severest critics would ever consider them capable.

Mama Sidibe was a regular and successful aerial outlet from defence three days earlier against Sunderland, but on Saturday he could have played with a free-range special strapped to his forehead and still not ended up with egg on his face.

His work-rate was its usual 200 per cent in all facets of the game, but even Ricardo Fuller was working so hard off the ball you wondered if someone had posted him a DVD of Ian Rush.

Stoke's sturdy defensive efforts were a particular triumph for Griffin and Ryan Shawcross when you consider many had written off one before the start of the season and the other after the very first game.

Griffin's personality and experience are obvious factors in his renaissance as a Premier League defender and Shawcross, a regular again following his omission after the opening day, has also dug deep into somewhere to bounce back from a potentially damaging setback at the opposite end of his career.

Griffin even had the temerity to underline the current state of his confidence by embarrassing a frustrated and on-rushing Nicklas Bendtner by cutely sidestepping the Danish striker in the first half, while in the second there was a near standing ovation when Faye advanced from his own penalty area with such poise and cheek that even Arsene Wenger had to stifle a round of applause.

But however admirable was Stoke's passing and retention of the ball – albeit against a team willing to let them play – it could not engineer an end-product to match the devastation wrought by Delap's air-to-surface missiles throughout.

Wenger admitted he too would deploy such a tactic were it ever to be at his disposal because, let's be honest, you wouldn't have Malcolm Marshall in your bowling attack and then ask him to bowl off-spinners.

Delap's first success came when a right-wing delivery left the goalkeeper hugging his goal-line, Kolo Toure isolated and unable to head clear and Fuller, with or without the aid of a slight nudge on his supposed marker, glancing almost freely into the far corner.

Delap himself might have doubled City's lead in the first half when failing to apply decent purchase to a goal-bound header that was cleared off the line as Manuel Almunia floundered in no man's land.

And the Arsenal goalkeeper was in similarly dire straits in the second half when the outstanding Shawcross glanced on Delap's throw for Seyi Olofinjana to stumble forward and actually chest the ball twice en route to unwittingly nut-megging the hopelessly flailing figure of Almunia.

Not since a hapless waiter was chased around a Torquay hotel by John Cleese has a Spaniard called Manuel looked quite so harassed in this country.

Olofinjana's double contact with the ball was so awkward as to leave you wondering whether a hand had been applied, but he'd have had to have cradled it in both arms and handed it personally to Rob Styles for him to have even considered the courageous step of disallowing a goal in front of an exuberant Boothen End rocking on its hinges.

Olofinjana's somewhat bizarre finish would double Stoke's lead at a time when Arsenal were belatedly hinting at a breakthrough themselves after Theo Walcott was eventually introduced to finally ask serious questions of the home defence.

Sadly, an awkward fall when being felled by Delap's mist-timed challenge left the young England star being stretchered away in stoppage time, his arm in a sling to graphically symbolise Arsenal's dreadful disarray.

The subsequent free-kick was drilled home via two deflections by Gael Clichy to tee up a potentially fraught climax that was never to materialise.

For Stoke's nerve, professionalism and discipline remained remarkably intact to the very end of a victory which, quite frankly, put their illustrious visitors to shame.

Wenger's only consolation was the absence on Saturday of all but a couple of Arsenal directors after what appears to be a difference of opinion in the boardroom as well as the dressing room.

What a contrast to the brotherhood inside the Britannia Stadium, where prawn sandwiches and mushy peas have never mixed so happily.