I am bloody sick of this crap regarding Ramsey. I've been reading Arsenal message boards and apparently some oatcake posters are advocating a minutes silence or applause for the 63rd minute (I think, the minute when he broke his leg anyway). If that's the case then that shows us to be a bunch of dicks. Also an Arsenal poster has suggested he should kick some pregnant Stokie in the stomach; seriously? There have been a couple of inflammatory blog-articles on the Metro site, by Arsenal fans calling us all Neanderthal's and making disparaging comments about Stoke and the people who live there; all the while painting Ramsey as some guileless lad who just wishes none of this had ever happened. Well, he is the only person who can stop this ****. He needs to.open his f**king mouth and say "stop it, it's passed now, I've moved on and I bear no malice to Shawcross" then Wenger needs to shut the f**k up about it too. I am genuinely concerned that this has escalated beyond the regular banter between fans and it's being fanned by the media as they sit back and smirk. Someone could get hurt.
Steady on Zoz...Alf Ramsey is our World Cup hero. Oh...THAT Ramsey!!!! Basically Zoz, this is why I have always been a Rugby man, first and foremost. Apart from Stoke, football and the attendant media food frenzy, just leaves me cold. Hysteria n' hypocracy rule. For 'true' sport, its the Six Nations for me. _
They have to talk about something mate they are a big club and won nowt for years, it's either the Shawcross incident or "Mais oui ze trophee cabinet eees still empty".
It was a bit of a rant wasn't it :-D Truly though, I'm totally pig-sick of reading such a biased perspective of it. I think though part of my frustration is that I've not read any article or blog by a Stoke fan offering a counter argument. Fans have responded, sometimes eloquently other times not, but there has not been a cogent, articulate piece to offer a balanced view from a Stoke perspective. Not living in Stoke I don't get the Sentinel any more; is it being covered at all in that?
Well on the Oatcake we have some songs for Saturday. If any Arse supporter threatens me I will react.
I was reading the Arsenal board yesterday and I can only say most of the comments I read are pathetic. To call us "in a word cave men, knuckle draggers is a JOKE. I'm not even going to comment anymore on this. Regarding that minutes silence for Aaron Ramsay??? any STOKE fan who does that is a moron and utterly childish. I said a couple of years ago. " It's OVER, forget it it's in the past" And I totally agree with Zozozela's comments above. WELL SAID!
I think they need to be treated with the contempt for which they deserve! I dont blame ramsey as such because he was young and probably feared for his career at the time, but Wenger was a total knute and should be ashamed at would he ultimatley lead - a witch hunt! Without going over old ground I have seen far worse tackles and having watched the footage a thousand times I still feel that it was a 50/50 ball in which Shawx was hindered getting to by the preceeding foul by an Arsenal player. I think it is unfair to go at Ramsey aswell because whilst he could come out and dilute the anger, he has also kept his own council so has not deliberatly fanned the flames. I would like to see the Stoke fans applaude and over support Ramsey to make the point rather than attack him because of some cock eyed plastic cockneys goading of Shawx! Its time for us to be the bigger man (club) over the issue and I feel that it would attract so much positve press if we did and make them look like total twats - mind you they do that most weeks anyway!
I am totally fed up with ARSENIL. They wonder why Stoke supporters have a go at Ramsey. It a red rag to a bull when he immediately ran to the Stoke supporters when he ran over to us to celebrate. Tomorrow I will be bringing up some sheets with songs aimed at Wenger. 100 red cards is a good one. Swing Lo sweet chariots I will look for other songs but I will be up early enough and I will be letting Wenger know what I think from where I sit and do hope we have a 'Let's all do the wenger!' Again only this season Ramsey has been commenting on the awful injury that Shawcross was responsible for. 4 years no apology accepted, no response from that club. They call us names, Yes we do not want to lower ourselves to their level, but they should get a very intense atmosphere tomorrow
Smithers - love the idea of over applauding Ramsey; even though it would be hard. We have to be the bigger person in this - Ramsey's continued sulking is comparable to tragic teen vampires with a sparkly faces. I think this going on damages our image and that damges the club and the careers of the players too. Still hope we win today of course and look forward to seeing the Wenger on MOTD as I cannot be there.
To be fair to Ramsey the injury was horrific. His leg was broken in six different places. It is one of the worst injuries the league has seen for years. Whether any intent was there from shawcross orn to it was a terrible tackle resulting in a terrible injury. Shawcrossl ooked notably upset afterwards but you can't blame a young football player who has the potential to captain his country and play a key role for one of the largest sides in Europe for being very upset by an injury which almost ended his career before it had properly started. It's taken him until the last year to properly recover and return to the sort of form he showed pre-injury so I don't think its suprising it has taken him a long time to let go of his anger at shawcross as well. As far as his silence celebration to the stoke fans - I think given the level of abuse sung at him since that night in stoke it's not exactly a travesty to say shhh when he scores is it? Not sure why so many people found this so offensive lol Having read through a load of the comments on that oatcake forum I'd be more concerned with your own classless fans than ours it's you lot that don't let this go lol (or so it seems from our side of the fence). I also find all the hard man comments hilarious, stoke is full of total softies!
The injury was horrendous, agreed. I have no problem with him shushing the fans, it's funny. I also have no truck with Stoke fans who are wanting to prolong this. If you'd read the comments on this thread, I'm sick of it but Ramsey needs to let it go and only he can do it. He needs to show some maturity and some professionalism and say it's over, I've accepted his apology and moved on. Then it can get back to the usual banter and low level hatred we've always had for each other instead of this turbo-nutter strength stuff that seems to be propelling some muppets just now.
The only way I can see this being put to bed is for the Stoke supporters to support both players, a huge cheer for the both of them will deflate any antagonism shown, no one wanted Ramsey to get injured and we all know that Shawcross didn't go into that tackle with any intent other than to win the ball. So applause for both players when ever the ball goes anywhere near them seems the order of the day, we all know it will get mentioned in commentary so a positive demonstration by the Stoke supporters undermines and diminishes any negativity from either the Arsenal fans or the pundits. It has been said before we need to be the bigger men.
I think if the Stoke fans cheered Ramsey and Shawcross the issue would be put to bed rather quickly. And having lived in (near) stoke for a couple of years i have to say this would represent the people of stoke better! I think the real issue Arsenal fans have is that Ramsey had a horrific injury that could of ended his career and the appraoch Stoke fans took was to hurl abuse at him and somehow push blame for the incident onto him. I think any young man in his position would most likely harbour the same feelings of resentment if put into a similar situation and whilst Stoke fans feel the reaction to Shawcross was unfair given his lack of intent to cause injury, the abuse Ramsey has taken must be seen as an unfair reaction because all the poor young man did was recieve one of the worst injuries in premier league history! It's definately got too far now though with swarms of stoke fans on that oatcake forum being totally out of order and offensive and some Arsenal fan talking nonsense about kicking a pregnant woman!!!
Well, agreed. It would be nice if both sets of fans could somehow let this go and get back to the real business of football.
This is exactly the reason I dislike football in general so much. Never mind the petulant, truculent, you know it players, who cannot utter a coherent sentence. His agent said or his spokesperson said etc ad nauseam. It is the so called fans, hmm...seems to me that whatever decency they have outside of football disappears once they step through the turnstiles and join their respective tribes. Liverpool singing songs about the Munich Air Crash United singing songs about Hillsborough and Heysel AND the obscene chanting in every ground, no I am not a prude nor a cissy, but it turns my stomach. It is at best, absolutely witless. It's not just the youngsters, guys of my age and woman !!!!! are just as bad. Somebody on here had an avatar some time ago of a 7 year old kid, in a football shirt giving the V sign, with a look of hatred on his face...with his proud father looking on. Sheer class. As an aside, did anyone see Ireland and Wales in Dublin on the TV, Welsh and Irish fans in the crowd drinking together. England against Ireland at Twickenham, 85,000 in the crowd, drinking together and guess what...not a single policeman in sight and the number of arrests outside the ground - zero. Enough of the soap box. Let's just smash those southern softy North London scummy bastards, kick that Welsh bastard into row z. As for that effing, homo French 2@, lets chuck urine over him,oh and stone the team coach.
