I appreciate what you mean about Stoke adding nothing to the league, but that is down to Pulis. Stoke don't play a Premier League brand of football, but rather a sophisticated form of pub league stuff. There is one significant thing though - it's effective. Yes, they ought to change because they'll never be first on a highlights programme, but that's the weakest reason. The strongest reason is that they will be found out eventually, by teams that will be able to play around them and win against their physicality.
Was lucky to not get number nine today as well. That foul he committed late on was worthy of a second yellow. And I think he knew it, based on how he immediately put his head in his hands.
They were actually playing aesthetically-pleasing football earlier in the year. That seemed to come to a close after they lost a couple games rather heavily...Pulis shut up shop, and now they've scored just three goals in their last seven games, taking four points along the way.
He thought he was off for a moment, luckily I don't think the ref wanted to mar the game with a red card.
[video=youtube;d9vd1VR9GF8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9vd1VR9GF8&feature=youtube_gdata_player[/video] Great win. Quality atmosphere. Three points next week please, or is that greedy
Hard to believe that we are 12th but only 4 points above the drop. However, no one has seriously considered us for the drop (other than technically) for a few weeks now. I was watching one pundit talking about relegation candidates last week and he did the teams below us and then two teams above us, but missed us out completely. The fact is that we have been playing well for some time, but got draws when we should have won. We are a very good side.
Loved seeing how happy Jos looked at the end taking in the applause in the Kingsland corner, he had a grin from ear to ear!
Mr Moss was a breath of fresh air as far as Referees have gone this year, he obviously didn't want to be the centre of attraction, he made a few strange calls, but mostly in our favour, that in itself is nearly unique. The Kingsland lino was also a credit to his kind, he got virtually everything right, and on a couple of occasions when he didn't know, he didn't guess, but put the onus on the better placed Referee, with these kind of Officials I suspect we would done a wee bit better in the result phase this season.
The only bad thing about today's results is that I predicted we would be 12th tonight in the Prediction League that never was!
You should have seen some of the challenges he let go in the Carlsberg Trophy Final last weekend, two footed studs up challenges were mere free-kicks!
The time he took he blow up for the Torres handball did worry me though. Thought he was going to let Torres get away with it, and thus run clean through against Boruc (But then again, it was a one-on-one involving Torres...) But yes, I thought it was very refreshing how much he let go in the middle of the park (nothing serious of course). I guess it's partly because (I think) he's someone who has learnt his trade in the Football League.
Cheers for that. I believe this may have been our first result where the opposition didn't have a bad day. Good luck against ManU.
