Football
Stoke City target West Ham, and ending 128 years of FA Cup pain
March 13, 2011 | 
Author
One of the Football League’s founder members, the Potters have never won the Cup but can get one step closer
Stoke City, who play West Ham United on Sunday at the Britannia Stadium in an FA Cup quarter-final tie, have had an albatross around their necks for the past 128 years. In 1883 the club made their debut in the competition but only they and Accrington of the Football League’s 12 founder members are yet to reach the final. Of the 20 current Premier League clubs, only they and Wigan, who played their first tie 51 years after Stoke, share that stigma.
A win against West Ham would at least get the Potters a trip to Wembley, a place they last visited in 2000 for their second Football League Trophy victory, rare highlights in an often traumatic 23-year exile from the top flight after relegation in 1985. A semi-final appearance would be their first for 39 years, the last in 1972, the second failure in succession against Arsenal at that stage, which gave them the dubious honour of featuring in the short-lived and unpopular third-place play-off twice in its five-year history. They have fared little better in the league and their record makes them the biggest most success-starved club in England.
A good omen for them, however, is that they had to defeat West Ham en route to the only significant entry on a spartan roll of honour, the 1972 League Cup. In an epic seven-hour, four-match semi-final Stoke won the second replay 3-2 at Old Trafford, but Gordon Banks had to pull off a save his team-mates think rivals the one he made from Pelé for England against Brazil at the 1970 World Cup to get there.
West Ham were awarded a penalty three minutes from the end of extra-time in the second leg and the goalkeeper’s fellow “Boy of 66″ Geoff Hurst smashed the ball, as he always did, from the spot. “I was flying through the air with both my arms pointing skywards,” Banks has said. “Geoff had hit the ball so hard that when my left hand made contact with it, I had to tense the muscles in my arm and wrist. Otherwise the ball would have knocked my hand aside. To my great relief the ball ricocheted up into the murky gloom and over the bar.”
They went on to defeat Chelsea, a team who shared the same swaggering, attacking instincts, 2-1 in the final but even then reports of the match make great play of Stoke’s historic lack of success. “The team they said could not win an argument,” wrote Hugh McIlvanney in the Observer, “at last took one of the major prizes in a Wembley Stadium that seemed to contain half the people and all the spirit of the Potteries.”
The following night the players celebrated their triumph alongside the Staffordshire miners and pottery workers in the supporters club by the Boothen End at the Victoria Ground.
That spirit of community is what endeared the club to Lou Macari who managed Stoke for two spells in the 1990s. “They are a proper club with proper fans,” he says. The Britannia Stadium is noted for the sheer volume of the crowd and, as well as the good-natured bawling of Delilah, the supporters generate a ferociously intimidating air.
It was just the same at the Victoria Ground, which they left in 1997, Macari explains. “The moment the away team stepped out of the dressing room they walked into a wall of noise. As they made their way down the tunnel they got abuse. It was hostile. I liked that.”
Macari was a popular figure among the supporters, but to a generation of them Tony Waddington, the architect of the League Cup-winning side, remains the club’s most cherished manager. His recruitment strategy, bringing Stanley Matthews back to the club, building a later side around George Eastham, and attracting talents of the calibre of Banks, Hurst, Dennis Violett, Jimmy Greenhoff, Peter Shilton and Alan Hudson re-established the club as a First Division force in the 60s and 70s. Stephen Foster, the author of two books about his club, She Stood There Laughing and … She Laughed No More, says: “You used to go down to the Vic with the feeling that these guys were swashbuckling and that they would probably win.”
Stoke had been unlucky to miss out on the league title in 1946-47 when they lost their last game, and unluckier still that the second world war robbed them of six years’ service from Matthews, Neil Franklin and Freddie Steele. But it was Waddington who put the club back on the map and their barber’s pole stripes became a mainstay of Match of the Day as they regularly got the better of Manchester United and Leeds at home in the 1970s. He led the club twice into Europe, but both Uefa Cup campaigns in 1972-73 and 1974-75 ended in the first round.
European football would return to Stoke if they could win the FA Cup this year, but Tony Pulis’s side have been defeated twice already by West Ham this season and the team has struggled since Christmas.
There is a sense that Pulis’s tactics have been rumbled after two seasons in the Premier League and among fans who travel to away games there have been murmurings of discontent. “In the first season,” Foster says, “amazing things would happen. It was like a carnival. Rory Delap would throw it long and we blasted Arsenal with two Delap Scuds. Everybody goes home absolutely delighted.
“There are games when it creates joy, but when it doesn’t work the purists in the crowd start saying: ‘Why can’t we pass the ball to each other?’ But if you’re bashing up Arsenal with Delap’s bombs, nobody cares because the joy outweighs the aesthetic demands for something else. We are one-dimensional, but when it works it is a fabulous one.”
When Stoke played at Arsenal and Fulham recently, chants of “1-0 to the football team” have rung out when City have gone behind. Pulis, though lacking charm, has not lost the fans who, in general, remain defensive about any criticism of the team’s style. He is, as Foster says, two games away from taking Stoke into uncharted territory. And those who remember dark days a decade ago when Port Vale leapfrogged them and regularly inflicted defeats on their neighbours would not turn on him even if pundits think “Pulisball” has run its course.
Boring or offending the purists, but at last winning something to give the League Cup an illustrious companion in the Britannia Stadium’s trophy cabinet would end a dismal record. That it may give Pulis the last laugh is a cross the idealists will have to bear.
Stoke City target West Ham, and ending 128 years of FA Cup pain
Manchester City ready for Reading and hungry for FA Cup, says Joe Hart
The England goalkeeper says the City squad are feeling the effects of challenging on three fronts, but it is no excuse
Manchester City may appear to have the easiest of the four FA Cup quarter-finals, at home to Championship opposition in Reading, but that would not necessarily have lifted the spirits of players who returned home in the early hours of Friday morning after an arduous trip and a sound beating in Kiev.
City do have a strong squad, and financial resources that are the envy of everyone else in England, but though Roberto Mancini risks derision every time he claims they are tired it is getting to the stage of the season where everyone is tired. In addition to inconvenient injuries inevitably picked up when playing twice every week and battling on three fronts, City are also having to cope with the pressure of living up to dramatically increased expectation. This time last season everyone was excited by the possibility of Tottenham breaking into the Champions League, yet City’s more or less permanent presence in the top four has largely been taken for granted. They are expected to succeed because they have invested so much money in their project, though as Joe Hart explains, the players are still adapting to the club’s new status.
“We are only human beings and the demands on our players now are very intense,” the goalkeeper says. “Tiredness and fatigue is a problem for most clubs at this stage of the season. We have been playing a lot of games recently and that’s why you have a big squad, to cope with all the games you get when you are still involved in a lot of different competitions. The top clubs are used to that, it happens every year, but it is something we are still adjusting to. You won’t find me complaining, I’m still fit and every player wants to have things to play for at the end of the season, but you can’t play so many games and not feel the effect.”
While the success of City’s season will be judged on whether they make the Champions League or not, there is little doubt a trophy is what the supporters crave most, if only to stop the incessant mockery coming from Old Trafford. An FA Cup win was the catalyst for Manchester United’s unprecedented success spree under Sir Alex Ferguson and, with due respect to the Europa League, where City will now find it difficult to advance, it would be a more than satisfactory way to mark the club’s new era.
“The FA Cup is a great opportunity for us now,” Hart says. “It’s been an exciting competition for us this season and we’ve had plenty of thrills and spills with the games against Leicester and Notts County. We beat Villa quite comfortably but we won’t be taking Reading lightly. Not after [their] knocking out Everton in the previous round.
“I think we have as good a chance as any of the big sides in the last eight and we all want to win it. The FA Cup is still a big trophy and there’s a determination in our dressing room to get to the final. People say City will only start to go forward when we win a trophy but regardless of moving forward and stepping up we want to win every game we play. We also want to give something back to the fans who have stuck with us. They have been so loyal down the years and now we have a chance to pay them back.
“We have a chance, but it won’t be easy. It’s very hard to win any trophy in this country – look at the Carling Cup final. No one gives you anything in England, you have to earn it. It’s the same in the Premier League, I watched the Blackpool-Chelsea match and although Chelsea won 3-1 they didn’t get the win easily. Blackpool were still coming at them right at the end. Teams don’t give up, and that’s why you have got to be at your best at this stage of the season.”
Manchester City ready for Reading and hungry for FA Cup, says Joe Hart
Didier Deschamps criticised over players tribute to arrested team-mate
• Marseille manager admits allowing ‘tactless’ show of support
• The striker Brandão was detained on allegation of rape
The Marseille manager, Didier Deschamps, has been accused of committing a serious misjudgment ahead of locking horns with Sir Alex Ferguson in the Champions League on Tuesday after the Frenchman admitted being aware of the tribute that his players planned to pay on Friday to a team-mate arrested for rape.
Brandão, the Marseille striker who played against United in the first leg three weeks ago, was detained by police last Tuesday and held for two nights before being conditionally released following an allegation of rape made by a 23-year-old woman.
The striker, who maintains his innocence, has been allowed to return to his native Brazil as he awaits a possible trial, but the way that some of his team-mates chose to express their support for him over the weekend has drawn widespread criticism.
When Loïc Rémy opened the scoring for Marseille in their 2-0 win at the Ligue 1 joint-leaders Rennes, two players, the winger André Ayew and the midfielder Stéphane Mbia, ran to the travelling fans and held aloft a jersey bearing the name Brandão. Later in the match some of the Marseille substitutes waved the same jersey into TV cameras.
Given the seriousness of the allegation against Brandão such displays were denounced as crass and there was surprise when Deschamps revealed that he had known his players were planning the controversial celebration. “Yes, I was aware of it but I didn’t forbid it,” he told La Provence newspaper. “It was meant well. Brandão is one of ours. It was just a nod to him, don’t read too much into the idea.”
The Marseille president, Jean-Claude Dassier, publicly berated Deschamps for allowing the display to go ahead. When told by La Provence that most fans were shocked by the players’ celebration, Dassier replied: “And with good reason. I was not informed about it, I would have stopped it. I understand the need to try to comfort a team-mate but a bit of tact would have been welcome.
“Frankly it was too much, a mistake. If Didier knew about it he should have told me because I would have made sure good sense prevailed. Because of their clumsiness this issue has become as important as our win.”
The win is what Deschamps preferred to concentrate on, since it brought Marseille to within one point of the top of the table ahead of what he termed “the marvellous aside” of the match against United. Having lost at home to Lille the previous weekend Deschamps made some tactical adjustments against Rennes that he may deploy against United.
He shifted Mbia from the centre of defence into midfield to lend extra dynamism. Gabriel Heinze moved from left-back to the centre of defence, allowing the Nigeria international Taye Taiwo to return to the starting line-up at full-back. Taiwo’s ferocious long-range shooting could pose a threat to United.
Perhaps most significantly of all, the influential forward Mathieu Valbuena, who has been sidelined with knee trouble for most of the last six weeks, came off the bench in the second half to demonstrate his fitness, meaning he is likely to start at Old Trafford. André-Pierre Gignac replaced Brandão as the fulcrum of the team’s attack but Rémy may fill that role instead against United.
Didier Deschamps criticised over players tribute to arrested team-mate
Anton Hysen states case for coming out
• Quito director blames extortion on immigration
• Nazi-newspapers make decorative appearance in Siberia
The former Liverpool defender Glenn Hysen seemed like an unlikely candidate to give the opening speech of the 2007 Pride Festival in Stockholm. Large parts of the gay community were in uproar because of an incident six years earlier, when he had become embroiled in a fight with another man who had tried “to touch him” in the toilets of an airport.
“Did that man deserve to get beaten up?” Anders Selin, the festival’s former chairman, asked rhetorically before saying: “Of course not.” Hysen had hit the man just because he was a man. “Hysen,” Selin wrote, was a representative of “the ugly face of homophobia”.
Four years later and we know why Hysen wanted to make that speech. In a revealing interview with the respected Swedish football magazine Offside (offside.org), Hysen’s son Anton became the first Swedish footballer at a high level to come out. It was a groundbreaking decision. In the UK, Gareth Thomas (rugby league) and Steven Davies (cricket) have come out during the past year. But the footballers, for the time being, are staying silent.
This is how Anton explained the reasons behind his decision: “Until now only my family and friends have known about my sexuality – well I think so, at least. That was the funniest thing when my dad made that speech. When he was talking about ‘a 16-year-old who didn’t want to come out because he feared what his team‑mates would think’, that was me. And people thought it so bloody strange that he was allowed to speak at the Pride Festival, that he was a homophobe and so on. Shit, they were so wrong.
“It is completely strange, isn’t it? It’s all fucked up. Where the hell are all the others? No one is coming out.”
Anton is 20. He had a contract with the top-flight club Hacken from 2007 to 2009 but a series of injuries meant he was not offered a new deal. He now plays in the second division (the fourth tier) for Utsiktens BK with the hope of moving up the divisions. “I know what I can do,” he says. “And if there will be thousands of people abusing me because I am gay then that will only motivate me to play better.
“Me coming out may have a bearing on my career [but that is a risk I am prepared to take]. There are people who can’t deal with homosexuals. A club may be interested to sign me but then the coach finds out that I am gay and doesn’t want to sign me any more. That could happen, but then it is their problem.
“I may not play in the top flight but I still want to show that it isn’t such a big deal. I am a footballer – and I am gay. If I perform as a footballer, then I don’t think it matters if I like boys or girls.”
Hysen has been widely praised for his decision to come out but there has, inevitably, been some adverse reaction. Swedish channel four had to pull their online article on Hysen because of the amount of abuse the player was getting.
Quito director wants stricter border control
The gang-related threats to footballers in Ecuador, as reported in last week’s Planet Sport, have developed further, with the Deportivo Quito director Santiago Ribadeneira saying he believes the extortion epidemic has its roots abroad. His answer: stricter border controls.
“Severe political security measures need to be applied to solve these insecurity problems,” he said. “We need to ask for visas from those people arriving in the country because that’s where this problem is coming from.
“What’s going on is real. In the case of Deportivo we’ve seen this reality and talked to players to inform them. Those footballers who have been brave enough to speak up have made the authorities see they’re losing the battle against delinquency in this country.”
Players such as Christian Lara, Edison Preciado and Frickson Erazo, from El Nacional, and Barcelona’s Jefferson Hurtado, have been told to pay thousands of dollars to keep themselves and their families safe.
Russia: Nazi newspapers make up table decorations
Some embarrassment at a media reception for the 2011 World Biathlon Championships in Siberia last week, when organisers failed to spot that table decorations made from old newspapers in different languages included two from Nazi-period Germany.
The first, Der Angriff (The Attack), an antisemitic propaganda sheet set up by Joseph Goebbels, bears a banner headline celebrating “Reich Chancellor Hitler!”. The second, the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, pronounces “The Invasion has begun”. There was a tiny stroke of fortune for the organisers, though, in that the paper was published on 7 June 1944 and refers to the D-Day landings in Normandy, rather than the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, which led to the deaths of more than 20 million Soviet citizens.
“It has no political cause,” said Irina Tashenko, venue director for the championships. She profusely apologised in a letter to biathlon’s world governing body, the IBU.
Anton Hysen states case for coming out
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Hamburg sack Veh after six-goal rout
Hamburg sack Veh after six-goal rout
Villa players sorry for spa day fracas
• Aston Villa defenders clashed with club coaches
• Club launch internal investigation into events
The Aston Villa defenders James Collins and Richard Dunne have issued apologies after clashing with the club’s coaching staff. The News of the World reported that the pair had been critical of some of the Villa manager Gérard Houllier’s coaching staff during a team break at a health spa in Leicestershire this week.
“I apologise unreservedly for my behaviour on Wednesday night. It was not acceptable and I am genuinely sorry,” Dunne told the newspaper.
Collins said: “We were wrong. This should not have happened and I apologise for the part I played.”
The club are due to launch a review of the incident. A spokesman said: “We have launched an investigation in line with our internal disciplinary procedures.”
Villa players sorry for spa day fracas
‘The system is starting to break down’
Putting match officials beyond criticism is a distraction from the real problem: the current system of refereeing is inadequate
Respect for referees was always going to be a hard sell in a culture where civility has broken down, vituperation plagues the blogosphere and the streets seethe with random fury.
What chance a man with two cards and a whistle commanding the obedience of football folk, who are locked into a perma-state of tribal myopia? But there is a confusion at the heart of the recent kerfuffles over managers criticising match officials and it has to do with that word “respect”. Good manners and consideration should not extend to meekly accepting decisions that are just plain wrong and then not being allowed to talk about them.
Allow me a personal reflection. I have always felt it right to defend the referee against a lynch mob, especially when attacks became a softening-up tool for clubs to protect their interests. There was always an imbalance between players and managers not admitting human error while officials were subjected to trial by television for decisions made at lightning speed and without the benefit of replays or multiple camera angles.
So far, so obvious. But over the past two weeks it has felt impossible to justify the performances of Martin Atkinson in the Chelsea-Manchester United Premier League match or Massimo Busacca in this week’s Barcelona-Arsenal Champions League second leg. Atkinson’s failure to send off Chelsea’s David Luiz for a glaring second bookable offence and the dismissal of Arsenal’s Robin van Persie for going through with a shot after the whistle had blown for offside were too grievous to dismiss with platitudes.
An aside about Van Persie’s offence: time-wasting by booting a ball into the stands is virtually impossible at that level anyway because a young chap in a tracksuit just throws another ball on to the pitch while the first one is retrieved. It violates the spirit of the game, certainly, but there was sufficient doubt about whether Van Persie had heard the whistle for the referee not to inflict such a draconian punishment.
Which leads back to the “respect” agenda and whether officials should be protected by regulations that prevent managers criticising them after the match. Who else in society can retreat behind walls that stop others hurting their feelings with adverse comment? Not players, managers, journalists, doctors, politicians or artists.
Arsène Wenger’s entertaining tirade against Uefa was partly an expression of frustration that a dubious decision that fundamentally alters the course of an epic Champions League encounter cannot be challenged without the one doing the challenging ending up in trouble. The manner of that challenge was intemperate, sure, but you don’t have to shout and swear into the face of a man in Uefa livery to bring the thought police to your door.
Sir Alex Ferguson attracted official displeasure for calling Alan Wiley “unfit” and is now on trial for employing a word he corrected straight away. The word was “fair”, which was leapt on with all the fervour of the John Cleese centurion at the stoning in The Life of Brian (“Fair! He said it again!”) “You want a strong referee, anyway, and we didn’t get that,” Ferguson clarified. But it was already too late to stop the misconduct charge.
Most of us would draw a line at the ref having his honesty impugned. Yet there needs to be scope for legitimate complaint. Otherwise we infantilise match officials and the watching public. The manager appears in front of a microphone with unseemly haste and is expected in that moment to consider the feelings of the match official above all else, even if he has just been knocked out of the Champions League or is about to lose his job.
This is not “respect”. This is conning the public and hypocritical, too, because any top referee will tell you the profession feels abandoned by its masters at the Premier League and Football Association. After the Atkinson affair it was said that refs who upset the big clubs fear they will be shunted off the biggest games for a month or four to placate the supposed victim. What kind of authority is that? This is how weak the system is.
When Wenger accused Uefa of being a “dictatorship” and said they need “more humility” he was rebelling against the stifling of dissent. It has become too easy to portray managers as serial moaners. On the occasions when refereeing is inept, as opposed to merely debatable, it shuts off the possibility of it ever getting better to deny managers (players, less so) the right to be heard.
In last week’s Liverpool-Manchester United game, Phil Dowd failed in his duty to send off both Jamie Carragher and Rafael da Silva for wild tackles. When the system crashes three times in a week in three big games it is hard to avoid the conclusion that technology-phobic governing bodies simply refuse to see that refereeing football matches by the present means has become untenable.
For managers to earn the right to complain they would have to self-regulate and establish limits to what can be said. But this omertà is farcical. It is a distraction from the real problem of system breakdown.
It’s taking part of the profits that counts
First they fought over the exploding budget, now they are wrestling over the profits. The British Olympic Association is effectively suing its own Games in a dispute with London 2012 about the distribution of any surplus from next year’s fiesta. Doesn’t it make you proud?
To condense the argument, the BOA wants the dosh shared out before the cost of staging the loss-making Paralympics is taken into account. London 2012 want to see what is left when both events are over. Meanwhile the Treasury, which has pledged £95m in Paralympic funding (it will cost £200m in all), will stake its own claim on any operating profit.
The proposed ratios are intriguing. Sixty per cent of any upside will go to the grass roots, with 20% to the BOA and the rest to the International Olympic Committee. Why? The IOC has its own gold mines. It should not be raiding profits that would improve public provision in the host country. Nor should the BOA be distancing itself from the cost of the Paralympics if it believes in sport for all.
Our logo should have been ferrets in a sack.
‘The system is starting to break down’
Mancini defends City’s sleepless prep
• City manager flew team home directly after Kiev match
• Hopes to recover in time for Reading on Sunday
Roberto Mancini has defended his decision to fly Manchester City’s squad back from Ukraine immediately after their Europa League defeat at Dynamo Kiev on Thursday night.
City’s charter plane touched down at Manchester airport just before 5am on Friday containing a group of extremely tired players who must prepare for an FA Cup quarter-final at home to Reading on Sunday.
Even so City’s manager never contemplated spending Thursday night in a Kiev hotel before returning fully rested. “If we had left on Friday we would have lost another day,” he said. “Usually after a game the players don’t go to sleep, so we felt it was better to get them back and try to get them right for Sunday.
“The FA Cup is really important to us. It’s a really big chance for us to get to Wembley. It’s a really difficult tie, though, because Reading have shown what they are capable of by beating Everton.
“One of the difficulties we have at the moment is that we are playing every three days. I hope we can recover in time for Sunday afternoon.”
With City trophyless for 35 years and aiming to make their first FA Cup semi-final appearance for 30 years, Mancini knows he could do without being added to Reading’s scalps at the start of a potentially season-defining week for his club.
“The FA Cup is totally different and offers us a big chance,” he said. “We know how long it’s been since the last semi-final so this would be good for us, good for the club and the fans.
“It’s a big week coming up in all three competitions. The Europa League [second leg at Eastlands on Thursday] is going to be hard for us but we still have a chance. The next few days will be important.”
Nigel de Jong did not disagree. “Reading’s a big game,” said the Dutchman, lately restored to fitness. “In a way it’s good to have another game so soon after Dynamo Kiev because the disappointment we are feeling now can be forgotten and we can give ourselves a huge boost. You could say our defeat in Kiev makes Reading even bigger.
“We can’t focus too much on the club being without a trophy for 35 years. We have to think about only the game and not the things which surround it. The fans obviously really want to win a trophy. So do we. We know all about the history of this club so we know how long it’s been. We are often reminded about it. Everyone knows what’s at stake.”
Mario Balotelli has been cleared by City’s doctors to feature against Reading after being withdrawn in the second half at Dynamo because of a violent allergic reaction to the type of grass used on the pitch, which caused his face to swell up.
The striker trained with the rest of the squad on Friday after being given tablets to combat an itchy rash. Balotelli has suffered occasionally from the problem in the past.
Mancini defends City’s sleepless prep
Arsenal lose Djourou for rest of season
• Defender disclocates shoulder in defeat by Manchester United
• Injury leaves Wenger short of options in central defence
Arsenal’s hopes of rescuing their season have taken a further blow, with the defender Johan Djourou being ruled out of the remainder of the campaign. Djourou was carried off after a collision with a team-mate, Bacary Sagna, in Saturday evening’s 2-0 FA Cup defeat by Manchester United at Old Trafford.
After the game the Arsenal manager, Arsène Wenger, said: “[He has a] dislocated shoulder. His season is over.”
Wenger’s resources in the centre of defence were already stretched: Thomas Vermaelen has not played since September due to an achilles problem and may not return this season and Laurent Koscielny and Sébastien Squillaci have struggled to adapt to English football. Another defensive option, Alex Song, has injury problems and Wenger may feel that playing the Cameroonian in central defence would weaken his midfield. The 19-year-old Ignasi Miquel, who is arguably next in line, has played only two senior matches.
A fortnight ago Arsenal harboured hopes of winning four trophies but they have followed defeat by Birmingham City in the Carling Cup final by being knocked out of the Champions League and the FA Cup.
Arsenal lose Djourou for rest of season
Stoke City v West Ham – live!
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50 min: A good point this, from Barry Sharp: “For Stoke’s goal Walters illegaly blocked Upson – usual Stoke ploy. They do it regularly but referees never call it. Pulis went off tapping his forearm. perhaps he can’t tell his elbow from his pass.”
49 min: Delap aims another monster throw into the penalty area and, perhaps sensing the electricity in the stadium, Da Costa hits a twitchy clearance back out.
48 min: This game has got a little bit tasty now. There’s a crackle around the crowd and in the stadium. Meanwhile Parker is wearing the look of someone who’s been vindicated. He was adamant he had not touched Etherington for the penalty.
SAVED! Etherington blasts the ball lowish and to Green’s left and the keeper saves.
PENALTY! Matthew Etherington goes dribbling into the box, nutmegs Tomkins and then goes down as Parker comes near him. The West Ham man is furious, saying Etherington dived.
Peep, peep: A massive boo rings around the stadium to greet referee Mike Jones after that West Ham goal. He smiles nervously, blows his whistle and the second half gets underway.
The West Ham players appear to be back out on the pitch, but there’s no sign of Stoke yet. Which gives us time for Martin Baker to make the point that the visitors are playing more like the home side than the home side are: “Maybe West Ham should extend their self appointed brief of upholding the value’s of the beautiful game to not cynically breaking up the oppositions play with niggly fouls and getting in the ref’s ear at every opportunity?”
Plug dept: Incidentally, the latest Calcutta Cup rugby match between England and Scotland is just about to kick off. Follow it live with Rob Bagchi here.
Three of us on the desk have been watching the handball replay: I think it was a definite handball. Scott Anthony and Gregg Roughley, however, are wrong: they think it wasn’t…
“‘Grant has a look that suggests he thinks Pulis can go do one if he likes’,” emails Joshua Reynolds. “Doesn’t Grant always have that look? I’ve never seen him smile in any picture.”
The handball debate: A quick poll of the sport desk reveals that no-one is quite sure whether it was Piquionne’s chest or upper arm that struck the ball in the lead-up to the West Ham goal. The Stoke players were certainly convinced it was handball, and it did look as much in the moment. However, Roy Allen emails in to suggest otherwise: “I don’t think Piquionne did handle the ball. It seemed to be his shoulder, and therefore legal.”
Peep, peep: The half ends with a flurry of shots at the West Ham goal. Green flails at each of them, just about keeping the ball out of the back of the net. Stoke probably deserved one of those efforts to go in, as they certainly deserve to be winning. But as the referee blows for the half, it’s 1-1. Tony Pulis wanders off angrily gesturing at Avram Grant that West Ham’s goal was a handball. Grant has a look that suggests he thinks Pulis can go do one if he likes.
47 min: Tomkins comes barrelling into the Stoke box, but Higginbotham is strong enough to hold him off. Spotting that the West Ham right back was out of position, Stoke knock the ball into the vacant area he was supposed to be guarding. Realising there’s trouble on the cards, Da Costa fouls Whelan, preventing him from getting onto the ball and earning a yellow in the process.
45 min: Rory Delap hurls in a howitzer from the left touchline and West Ham, having learned their lesson, head it clear. But it goes out for another throw, from which Delap has more success. This time Rob Green has to scramble the ball clear with a good punch. Three minutes of added time.
44 min: “The view from behind the net seems to indicate that the ball may have come of the upper right chest area,” emails Richard Johnson, who can only be a massively partial West Ham supporter if that’s what he thinks. “I say this as an impartial West Ham supporter,” he adds. Oh.
43 min: Scott Parker appears to lose his head for a minute. West Ham, edging their way back into the game, come flying forwards. Then Parker, spotting Sorenson slightly off his line, smashes a shot from a couple of miles out … which goes several miles wide, bobbling tamely behind for a goal kick. He looks suitably ashamed.
41 min: … The winger swings the ball over, and Rob Green comes out and punches clear. It falls at Whelan’s feet, on the edge of the box. He shoots, but does so high and wide.
40 min: Walters is fit enough to carry on and Stoke continue with a sense of aggrieved pride after the West Ham goal that shouldn’t have been. The game gets a bit niggly, mostly thanks to the actions of the visitors. Jones gets a piece of Matthew Upson in the back of his head, then Hitzlsperger earns a yellow for a reckless challenge. Etherington stands over the resulting free kick …
37 min: “Etherington is such a class player,” emails David Wall. “He keeps the game simple and can actually perform all of the necessary skills to order. It’s no coincidence that Stoke’s recent slump has happened while he has been injured. And it’s a travesty that people such as Shaun Wright-Phillips (and Aaron Lennon to a lesser extent) have accumulated numerous international appearances while Etherington remains un-capped.” He’s playing very well today.
36 min: And now Jon Walters goes down. Pennant had lifted a free kick into the box and the Stoke striker seemed to get inadvertently caught by Da Costa. Looked innocuous enough, but he’s getting some treatment on his ankle in the penalty area.
35 min: There’s a slight pause as the striker gets some attention. He limps off the pitch and will be replaced by Jonathan Spector, despite Robbie Keane doing some attention-grabbing running along the touchline.
34 min: It should have been the linesman’s call to spot that handball but he was looking directly into the sun. The referee was unsighted by Huth, so needed his assistant to help out. His only excuse can be that he was dazzled by the low glare. Piquionne, meanwhile, was injured in bundling the ball over the line and he’s just slumped to his bum on the centre spot.
GOAL! Stoke 1-1 West Ham (Piquionne, 29 min) A controversial one against the run of play. Thomas Hitzslperger lifted the ball over Huth in the Stoke defence. Piquionne ran onto the pass and clearly controlled with his hand. The referee and linesman fail to spot it, allowing the striker to flick a shot over Sorenson, where it bounces into the net accompanied by a bundle of Huth and Piquionne’s limbs.
29 min: Pennant latches onto a ball headed into the Stoke area by Noble and then goes on a weaving run for most of the length of the pitch. Nothing comes of it, but he has a satisfied look on his face that more or less says, ‘I quite fancied doing that’. A minute later, Shawcross puts in the sort of tackle on Piquionne that can’t be described as anything but an enforcer.
27 min: Stoke pass the ball around the West Ham defence, with Bridge chasing around like a man trying to grab a hat that has blown off in the wind. There’s speculation that West Ham are nervous. It’s hard to understand why. This is, after all, their job.
24 min: From a Stoke corner, Robert Green comes out to claim Etherington’s cross. He gets a knock in the process, an elbow to the face, and spends the next couple of seconds staggering about his area counting the various little birds and stars that are now floating and dancing around his head.
23 min: Obina and Higginbotham have a coming together in which the West Ham striker both came off worse and was the one at fault. With a bouncing ball to deal with he came flying in with a very high foot (although, watching the replay, Higginbotham’s feet weren’t exactly on the ground either) and caught the Stoke defender. He earns a yellow card, a boo from the fans and rolls around in pain for a bit.
21 min: Bridge plays the ball to Piquionne then runs around on the overlap. But the striker doesn’t find him and, instead, loses the ball. It means there’s a big hole in the left back position which Stoke exploit by playing the ball there for Jones to run onto. He crosses for Walters but places his pass too far in front of the striker and West Ham get a let off.
19 min: Another Etherington cross comes in, this time for Jones. It comes to nothing but Tomkins may as well be a revolving door so easily is the Stoke winger going round the West Ham right back.
17 min: Etherington again goes flying down the left wing. It takes two men to deal with him (Scott Parker has to come and help Tomkins) but it sets up a period of Stoke possession outside West Ham’s box. It’s a period ended when Delap tries to chip a pass back to Etherington but succeeds only in thumping the ball somewhat skillessly into the stands.
16 min: Obina attempts to find Cole in the box, sending in a low ball at a 45 degree angle from 30 yards out. Stoke, though, are in charge at the moment. Their physicality has not allowed West Ham to settle yet, an example of which comes when Thomas Hitzslperger is simply knocked off the ball.
GOAL! Stoke City 1-0 West Ham (Huth, 11 min) That, right there, is some classic Stoke. Rory Delap winds back his arms and hurls the ball into the box with one of his special throws. Then Robert Huth comes bundling onto it and nods it powerfully into the net. It doesn’t get much more Stoke than that.
11 min: “Did the phrase ‘playing football’ become synonymous with pass-pass-pass and maybe shoot, maybe score, maybe win, but usually just excite North London-based media pundits about the same time Nessun Dorma and Nick Hornby were flavours of the month?” asks a pugnacious Gary Naylor. “If either of Stoke’s two centre-halves were, yep, playing football for Arsenal, I suspect that club’s season might not be fizzling out yet again.” I wonder if perhaps the problem is that Stoke seem so utterly fixated on not entertaining anyone at all – granted, entertainment is not the be all and end all, but it would be nice occasionally.
9 min: Etherington again makes some space down the left after chipping the ball over Tomkins. He knocks the ball across the top of the box but Walters’ shot is poor.
8 min: The corner is cleared to the touchline for a throw-in. Tomkins hurls the ball in and Carlton Cole nods it behind for a goal-kick.
7 min: Tomkins sends a raking free kick across the Stoke City box, but no-one can get near it, so the ball dribbles behind for a goal kick. Sorenson hits it long, and West Ham return it via Bridge. Ryan Shawcross, though, can’t deal with it and concedes a corner.
5 min: Etherington cross in from the left now, trying to find Jones, but his pass is too high. So Pennant takes control and sends another cross in from the right. Stoke have started at a high tempo, trying to press their point home early on.
4 min: The marking on Pennant needs to be considerably tighter – a cross from the wings is almost certainly Stoke’s preferred method of attack today. They try to do so again, with Pennant tricking his way about near the West Ham box but unable to find a way in.
2 min: Pennant tries to cross for Jones, who has a good reputation against West Ham when he starts, but the ball is kept out. But it’s Etherington who forces the first save of the game. Pennant’s second cross of the day is a good one and the former West Ham man forces a brilliant save from Green from a header from the penalty spot.
Peep, peep: We’re off. West Ham immediately attempt to send a low cross into the box, which is defended simply enough. The sun casts a shadow almost exactly down the middle of the pitch, one side of the Britannia is in sunlight, the other in darkness, nicely mirroring the stripes on their shirt.
Gordon Banks has been lurking about the Stoke dressing room, presumably hoping to inspire the side he made 194 appearances for. Meanwhile, the teams are in the tunnel and clickety-clacking their way towards the pitch. Kick-off in a couple of minutes.
“Pulis is always consistent with his team selection… He leaves anyone who can actually play football on the bench,” emails Tom Cobbley (“Yes, really,” he adds).
Backstage, Dave Kemp, the Stoke assistant manager says of last week’s loss: “They caught us by surprise with the height of the team last week and perhaps we weren’t quite prepared for that.” He says they’ve set the team up to counter West Ham’s physical threat, which doesn’t bode well. Avram Grant, somewhat unconvincingly, says his side “will try to play football”. Hmmm.
Pre-match email: “I like the fact this has got hump and hoof written all over it, ” grunts Bill Riley. “There’s something very English and FA Cup about two sides sending out a bunch of bruisers to kick lumps out of each other, the pitch and then the ball (in that order). The only downer is that they seem to be playing on a pitch with grass on it, rather than one that is essentially all just mud.”
Team news
Stoke: Sorensen, Wilson, Shawcross, Huth, Higginbotham, Pennant, Delap, Whelan, Etherington, Walters, Jones.
Subs: Nash, Collins, Fuller, Pugh, Diao, Whitehead, Wilkinson.
West Ham: Green, da Costa, Tomkins, Upson, Bridge, Noble, Parker, Hitzlsperger, Piquionne, Cole, Obinna.
Subs: Boffin, Gabbidon, Boa Morte, Spector, Hines, Keane, Jacobsen.
Referee: Mike Jones (Cheshire)
Carew misses out after failing to recover from a back injury, but the presence of both Pennant and Etherington at least means there will be some craft on the pitch. Thomas Sorensen is in the team, maintaining Pulis’ policy of playing the keeper in the Cup. Though it should also help avoid a repeat of Asmir Begovic’s howler that sparked the West Ham victory last week.
Victor Obinna will replace Demba Ba, who it seems is unable to play too often because of a dodgy knee. Perhaps West Ham’s decision to take a risk by signing him after he failed a medical at Stoke may later become an issue. Robbie Keane is on the bench after returning from injury.
Preamble: Stoke City’s heroic and historic lack of success in the FA Cup is something to behold. They’ve never played in the final – alongside Accrington, one of two of the football league’s founding members not to have done so – nor is their trophy cabinet exactly bulging with silverware.
Once described in this newspaper as a team who could not even win an argument, these days they are at least adept at starting them. For there are not many teams who divide fans quite so much with their apparent happiness to revel in a reputation for being unable to play football. While their ugly hoof-it-to-the-big-man tactics are ones which cause little joy outside the club’s fans, increasingly as they fail to lead to results, Tony Pulis’ one-dimensional stewardship is beginning to trouble even Stoke fans. The plaudits they might have received for winning ugly against Arsenal will not be repeated if they attempt to do the same against West Ham today.
The problem, though, is that the side they face in the Cup thumped them last week in the league, capping a revival that seems to have breathed new life into the Londoners. Thomas Hitzlsperger’s return from injury and Demba Ba’s increasing influence have injected quality and spirit into two vital areas on the pitch – although the striker is absent today – and taken some of the pressure off Scott Parker. There seems to be some belief now at West Ham that the team can stay up, while the air at Stoke is of decline.
How that plays into an FA Cup tie remains to be seen, but Pulis’ assertion that a win today can give the team confidence in the league suggests this is far from a priority. The West Ham striker Carlton Cole, who’ll start today, is a little more ebullient: “LETZ AV IIIIITTTTT!!!!!!!” he tweeted an hour or so ago.
Stoke City v West Ham – live!
