If the following sounds like I am bitter that’s because I am bitter. Like any fan who invests time and money in following their club, I am a bad loser. But some defeats are harder to take than others. Losing the 2006 FA Cup Final was heartbreaking for obvious reasons, but coming away from Cardiff the next day there was at least a feeling that we had been part of something special which would be remembered for decades to come. Driving back from Stoke on Sunday I felt that we had been part of something ugly that had very little to do with football.
Avram Grant has subsequently been fined for describing referee Mike Jones as “weak”. Jones missed fouls by Stoke players in the build up to both goals, was duped by Matthew Etherington’s dive and failed to give a blatant West Ham penalty. The implication from Grant was that Jones felt he needed to balance things up having awarded Freddie Piquionne’s contentious goal. Avram, having already said enough to get himself in hot water, was not able to elaborate. I will. Jones was the perfect facilitator for Stoke’s underhand tactics.
Pulis’s unimaginative style of play has been talked about by many ad nauseam but that does not make the experience of witnessing it any more tolerable. Only someone with rock-bottom expectations, not only of their football viewing experience, but of their very life would voluntarily give up their Saturday afternoons or worse, travel the country, to watch this anti-football.
“You only score from a throw-in”, was the chant from the West Ham fans. In truth, this is one of the least ugly aspects of their game, and who can really blame them for adopting this tactic, given its effectiveness. The vulgar aspect of this set piece is how Jonathan Walters and co impede opposition defenders who are trying to deal with it. Referees such as the woefully inept Jones should take a share of the blame for not stopping it, but ultimately it is the manager who instructs his players to break the rules. If someone breaks into your house, do you blame the burglar or the policeman who fails to catch him?
Their tactics are not unique. The Wimbledon of the eighties and nineties were similar both in terms of directness and sheer brute force. If only the Potters would meet a similar end. Whereas the Dons could claim to be working with limited resources and therefore limited players (a Premier League game against Everton in 1993 attracted just 3,039 fans. Dean Holdsworth is considered a legend), Stoke have no such excuse.
Wimbledon never had the luxury of fielding a player who has won La Liga and has scored in a Champions League Final. Under Pulis, Carew is reduced to trying to get on the end of Rory Delap throws and long balls from Ryan Shawcross. It makes for a rather sad spectacle.
Of course the life of a football fan is not all about watching pretty football. Many is the time this season that I would have gladly sacrificed a few sideways passes for three points. However, there is no reason to suggest that a less direct approach would lead to a deterioration in Stoke’s performance. With one of the most limited squads in Premier League history, Blackpool have completely overachieved this year whilst playing free-flowing football.
The good news for the Potters is that they are not short of people ready to take pity on them. Or at least that’s the only way I can get my head round the decision of Hollywood Monster – “a leading supplier of Signs, Banners and Wide Format Digital Print in Birmingham, the West Midlands and Nationwide” – to sponsor, of all things, Stoke’s substitutions. That’s right: the substitutions at the Britannia “are brought to you in association with Hollywood Monster”. It seems perverse that a company concerned with style and presentation have made a strategic decision to associate themselves with the two ugliest teams in the Premier League – Birmingham being the other. What next - Midsomer Murders being sponsored by the Commission for Racial Equality?
The reality is that if every team played like Stoke, football as we know it would cease to exist. Who could possibly endure that every week? I have witnessed three of the four games against Stoke this season and, including travel and tickets, have spent around £150. To endure that 40 times a season I would need someone to pay me.
As a fan I think you have to ask yourself what motivates you to watch a football game? Is it the possibility of winning or the spectacle of a good game? Presumably it’s a bit of both, but surely what attracted you to football in the first place was the latter. Otherwise, why football? Why not another sport? And what interest would you ever have in a game where you are just a neutral observer?
If there was one moment that embodied the nastiness of Sunday’s game it was Matthew Etherington’s dive. The man whose gambling debts West Ham United paid off to stop him going bankrupt. And my, how he celebrated the winning goal. Oh, what a lovely club. Matty, you have found your level.
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