ANYBODY got any Strepsils? My throat is hurting after one of the most dramatic, gut-wrenching matches of football I’ve ever seen.
To beat Manchester City with 11 men would have made me proud, but to win in the circumstances of this afternoon’s game left me staring around the ground, speechless.
Myself and my father watched a cracking match for the first half hour, made more entertaining by the contrasting styles of the two teams and the unusually vocal visiting supporters.
Then it turned on an incident for which ultimately the referee must take some flak.
Not for the challenge on Shaun Wright-Phillips which saw Rory Delap banished to the stands – that looked a bad challenge to me, although I was not close enough to be sure.
In my view the play should have been stopped before Delap ever got to challenge for that ball.
There were at least two dubious challenges immediately before Delap’s, the last of which was by Wright-Phillips.
SWP’s tackle left a Stoke player sprawled on the turf and it seems that Rory exercised retribution.
Now kicking players is wrong and players who do it deserve to get sent off, but this incident reminded me of that classic bit of Barry Davies commentary when a ref let fouls go in a Manchester United match and Eric Cantona then fouled an opponent: “The referee took no action, so Cantona has.”
In this case, the ref took no action so Delap did.
Delap had to go, but amazingly the dismissal had the effect of galvanising Stoke into one of the most competitive displays seen at the Brit this season.
And they produced the most outstanding moment of the match when Etherington danced down the wing and dinked a superb cross onto Beattie’s head. It was such a good cross that even I might have scored from it. Maybe not.
That goal in first half stoppage time put the onus on Manchester City to overcome 10 man Stoke.
They threatened sporadically to score and new signing Bellamy had a shot just wide and another just over the bar.
But they produced almost nothing on target in the match and Sorensen did not have to make a save worthy of the name.
All the same, given recent history against United and Chelsea, yours truly could not relax until the match was finally over after five minutes of injury time.
As at the Aston Villa match, I was then hugged by two complete strangers – men who had never met me 90 minutes earlier.
Amazingly, we are now just four points worse off than today’s opponents and Hull City.
And while I refuse to predict we can get anything from an away fixture at the moment, I’d rather be facing Sunderland next weekend than many other teams.
After that it’s fast-sinking Portsmouth, who today are only above Stoke because there goal difference is two goals better than ours.
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