Olivier Giroud battles with Charlie Adam (Picture: Getty Images)

Losing to anyone is hard to take. Losing to a Stoke side which is still full of thugs and who kick their way to victory is, well, sickening.

On Saturday Arsenal travelled to Stoke knowing a win would keep them one point off the top of the table. They failed to turn up and put in an incredibly poor display. I make no excuses for that, even if the penalty award was very soft and would probably not have been given at the other end.

But, what was worse than the Arsenal performance, was that of the referee who let Stoke get away with stamps, rakes and all manner of ugly behaviour.



Charlie Adam delivered two stamps on Arsenal players, neither of which were punished. In fact, one was even given as a free-kick to Stoke.


STOKE BLOG: Arsenal fans should stop making excuses – their team just wasn’t good enough

Before the game Stoke fans were crying that they are hard done by. In some feat of master delusion, they have decided it is the comments of Arsene Wenger which have given them the reputation the rest of us know they so thoroughly deserve.

Ask Gareth Bale how he feels about Charlie Adam. In fact, ask a player from any side he’s faced recently. It isn’t just Arsenal fans who hate Stoke and see them as a team of thugs, even without Tony Pulis at the helm any more.

Speaking after the game, Stoke’s Steven Nzonzi has admitted that they not only know Arsenal don’t like to be kicked but that they are going to keep doing it. What side does like being kicked? And when did tackling hard stop being enough?

Arsenal fans are often criticised, as is Wenger, for wanting to rid the game of tackling. This is based on comments which people have deliberately misunderstood.

Wenger, in fact, has often stated he admires a good tackle.

What none of us like is thuggery. Going out to kick players is thuggery. It is not football, it is not ‘playing hard’ – it’s thuggery and it has no place in what is supposed to be the best league in the world.

A big part of the problem Arsenal fans had with the Aaron Ramsey leg-break was that in many of the games prior to that, Stoke had deliberately set out to hit Arsenal hard, to ‘get amongst them’.

STOKE BLOG: Victory showed why we deserve to be in the Premier League

They said as much themselves. When you deliberately intend to go in hard on a team, what happened to Ramsey can be the consequence.

It wasn’t just ‘bad luck’ or ‘mistimed’ but the result of a systematic approach designed to kick Arsenal out of games which was all the rage for quite some time.

It seems like nothing much has changed up there. The sooner they are relegated the better for everyone in the Premier League.

Sorry Championship sides, but I really can’t wait until the day they are your problem.

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