No Trains To Stoke But The Gherkins Get Through Alexis MotM

Not long after Arsenal’s third goal the announcer advised there would be no trains to Stoke from Euston, a giant cheer and then the crowd gleefully crowed “3-0 and you can’t get home”. One or two cruelly suggested that the place is so awful that even train drivers won’t stop there.

This was one of the easiest wins at home against Stoke at home in a long time, they were quite toothless, dirty but toothless. We should have won easily by 6 nil, Walcott in particular wasted an open goal, and Giroud could have done better, but it was a fine overall team performance.

Ospina was barely tested so we will have to wait to find out how good he is. Indeed the crowd got fed up with jeering Shawcross and spent their time practising their Oooospina! name call every time the keeper had to clear, and very good he is at it too. Maybe Szczesny should put an O at the front of his name to get a similar name check.

Shawcross had done the usual Stoke wind up in the London Standard, claiming how Stoke love beating Arsenal, but there was not much pleasure for them in this match, and indeed most of the times they have played Arsenal away.

The only problem that Stoke created was that Arsenal were forced to substitute defender Matthieu Debuchy who dislocated his shoulder in a challenge from Marko Arnautovic and collided with the advertising boards behind the goal. I was at the opposite side of the ground and have not seen any replays yet so not sure exactly how it happened.

However the crowd got very fed up with the referee who seemed to ignore the dirty niggling tactics used by Stoke, the first of whom I think of is Crouch. Who after every infringement held out his Giraffe forelimbs in a Bambi like gesture. The ref, who had cried all the way through Bambi, failed to notice much of this, but in the end he tired of Crouch’s tactics and booked him, huge cheer from crowd.

Alexis was clearly the Man of the Match with an assist and two goals, and the crowd were set alight by the wonder of his mazy run and near post finish for Arsenal’s second goal. Everyone, except the couple of coach loads of Stoke fans, went home happy.

On the way out I met Brian of BoF who was able to inform me that the sundried tomato man had managed to smuggle in gherkins this time, in a jar I gasped? “Of course not” he replied, if only the team learnt as quickly.

It was good to be joined by Simon68 in the BoF afterward and everyone was upbeat; as we walked out into the cold night we realised it would be three weeks before we would all be at a home match again. As we passed the Gunners Pub on the way to the station an almighty roar went up, that’s Southampton 1-0 up uttered Brian wisely.

Spurs had lost the day before, a perfect football weekend.