Tottenham v Everton – live!
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42mins: Which they very nearly do. Bale crosses low from the left and a lunging Defoe is inches away from turning it in at the near post.
40mins: Everton’s first and best chance, Neville crossing from the right and Rodwell sending a free header wide from eight yards or so. I still think they’ve got hope here, though obviously they can’t concede another.
37mins: “Can I just say how disappointing it is, from an Arsenal fan’s perspective, that Good Ol’ Harry has finally realised how good Pavlyuchenko is,” writes Chris Sturrock. “His previous neglect of the Russian had been a real source of amusement and reassurance to me. I just hope he has a customary change of heart about him before the derby game at White Hart Lane.”
35mins: It says something of Tottenham’s current inflated levels of confidence that Bassong just intercepted the ball on the edge of his own area, layed it off to a teammate, thundered 80 yards up the pitch, dummied the return ball and sprinted into the penalty area all set to collect his goal of the season award when he met Bale’s cross with a stunning header into the top corner. Bale’s cross, however, went straight into Phil Neville’s midriff.
33mins: Suddenly Everton are looking very much like they did on Thursday, letting their opponents pass freely in front of their defence and hoping for the best.
GOAL! Very good goal indeed! Croatia 2, Everton 0 (Modric 28) Corluka, Kranjcar and Modric play keep-ball down the right, totally befuddling the Everton defence and finding more and more space in increasingly dangerous areas with every tippy-tappy pass until Modric shoots over Howard and into the net very stylishly from 15 yards or so, possibly with the aid of a deflection. No non-Croatian foot touched the ball for about two minutes.
26mins: Pienaar crosses from the left, Gomes comes to claim, gets half a hand on it, spills it and wins a ludicrous free-kick even though Yakubu didn’t touch him at all. There’s hope here for Everton.
25mins: Quite an even game now. Everton have just had a couple of corners without creating a chance, then Bale bursts down the left, crosses well and Kranjcar heads at goal. Not very well, but it’s a chance.
21mins: Palacios passes to Pavlyuchenko, who cuts in from the left wing and lashes a shot from 20-odd yards that starts heading to the near post and then veers at the last moment towards the centre of goal. Howard pushes it away.
20mins: Bale does terrifically well to get back at Anichebe and win the ball, but the Everton striker, making his first start for aeons after a nasty injury, takes a worrying amount of time to get up. Seems OK, though…
19mins: It’s been emphatically different since the goal, with Everton having at least as much of the play as Tottenham. “They’re asking a few questions,” agrees Chris Waddle.
17mins: Everton win a corner, Heurelho Gomes comes to claim it. He jumps alone, gets both gloves on the ball, then drops it at an astonished Yakubu’s feet. The ball is eventually hacked clear, but that was abysmal goalkeeping.
16mins: Chris Waddle is letting rip at the Everton midfield, who have “done nothing” and are “all showing to feet” when what they require is “legs”.
14mins: Gina G is Australian, as Gary Naylor so correctly points out. I have changed the offending paragraph so it looks like I didn’t make the mistake in the first place [bursts into evil cackle].
GOAL! Tottenham 1 Everton 0 (Pavlyuchenko, 11) Spurs get their reward for all the early possession. They don’t have to work very hard for it, though – a longish ball to Defoe, who’s given way too much time to turn and run into the right side of Everton’s penalty area. His shot is low and hard and woefully off target, so much so that his strike partner is able to turn it in.
10mins: Tottenham haven’t quite had 100% of possession so far, but it’s close.
9mins: Phil Neville has been booked for a rather amateurish tackle on Gareth Bale out near the left corner flag.
7mins: It’s actually a perfect pitch, the ball’s zipping about like Zippy at the zip-lovers’ annual zip convention. Long, fast, true passes along the ground are the theme so far. I’m feeling optimistic about this one.
4mins: Anichebe gives the ball to Defoe, he feeds Pavlyuchenko – decent link-up between the Spurs strikers, but Phil Neville steals the ball before the Russian can shoot.
3mins: The character getting the early praise is Tottenham’s groundsman, Darren Baldwin. The pitch is looking pretty sharp given how close this match apparently was to being rained off.
1min: They’re off!
12.58pm: The players are on the pitch, we’re just a few moments (and adverts) from kick-off)…
12.48pm: This is the time when I would be bringing you the most exciting nuggets of pre-match blather from the ESPN team. I’m waiting.
12.27pm: And we’ve already got some teams! And they’re quite interesting – Defoe: in! Pavluchenko: in! Saha: out! Bilyaletdinov: on the bench!
Tottenham: Gomes, Corluka, Bassong, Dawson, Bale, Kranjcar, Huddlestone, Palacios, Modric, Pavlyuchenko, Defoe. Subs: Alnwick, Kaboul, Crouch, Gudjohnsen, Kyle Walker, Dervite,
Assou-Ekotto.
Everton: Howard, Neville, Heitinga, Distin, Baines, Anichebe, Arteta, Pienaar, Osman, Rodwell, Yakubu. Subs: Nash, Yobo, Jagielka, Bilyaletdinov, Donovan, Vaughan, Gosling.
Referee: Steve Bennett.
12.23pm: Everton are England’s form side at the moment, but then as anyone who had the extremely depressing misfortune of seeing their Europa League performance in Lisbon on Thursday will know, they have the potential to be utterly rubbish. Perhaps they are, at present, the footballing equivalent of Gina G, who hit the high notes in Blighty but was distinctly second best when called upon to represent our nation in Europe (if your stomach is strong enough you can watch her 1996 Eurovision performance, introduced by Virginia Bottomley, for chrissakes, here). One defeat in 12 is their current league run, though eagle-eyed stat-hawks will notice that they have won just one of their last seven away.
Spurs, who closed their training ground last week after an outbreak of something totally hideous, are still grumbling about their game at Goodison in December, where they fluffed a two-goal lead and a stoppage-time penalty to draw 2-2. They list Jermain Defoe as a doubt today, and give Peter Crouch a late fitness test, leaving the way clear for Roman Pavlyuchenko to continue his recent goalscoring run.
You can still read some pre-match stuff here, if you like
If you’re looking for team news ahead of today’s game, you can check out our squad sheets right here. Whichever team Tottenham sends out, though, you have to wonder how much their routine has been disrupted after the club decided to close their training ground on Friday in a bid to contain a virus affecting players and staff.
James Callow reports: Harry Redknapp is hoping the virus sweeping through the club will not derail Tottenham Hotspur’s Champions League hopes as it did four years ago.
After several first-team players fell ill this week it was decided to close the indoor facilities at the Spurs Lodge training ground in Chigwell, Essex, for sterilisation. Redknapp instead held his pre-match media briefing at White Hart Lane ahead of Sunday’s home match with Everton.
Vedran Corluka and Wilson Palacios were the worst affected but could recover in time for what could be a key match in Spurs’ campaign to finish in the top four.
Read the rest of the article here
Ramsey to miss season after leg break
• Young midfielder out for rest of season and perhaps longer
• Operation on horrifically broken leg described as successful
Arsenal have confirmed that Aaron Ramsey broke both bones in his lower right leg in a horrific collision at Stoke yesterday.
The young midfielder will miss the rest of the season after a successful operation on his tibia and fibula. Having been rushed to a local hospital yesterday afternoon, he is expected to be moved to London today.
Play was held up for five minutes after Ramsey was tackled by Stoke City’s Ryan Shawcross. Several players appeared distressed – two were sick. Shawcross left the field in tears after being shown a red card. Arsenal won the match 3-1.
Arsenal’s manager, Arsène Wenger, called the tackle “horrendous” and said a three-match ban for the red card would be “just ridiculous”.
Stoke’s Tony Pulis, while condemning the tackle, defended Shawcross, saying he “would never, ever go out to hurt a fellow professional”.
An Arsenal statement said: “The operation successfully reduced the fractures and whilst it is too soon to state an exact timescale for recovery, Aaron will certainly miss the remainder of this season. Our thoughts are with Aaron.”
Pompey ‘could escape nine-point penalty’
• ‘Assumption of automatic deduction has never been tested’
• Administrator is investigating all transfers made by the club
The administrator in charge of Portsmouth believes there is a chance of the club avoiding an expected nine-point penalty.
Andrew Andronikou, a partner at the accountancy firm UHY Hacker Young, has been advised that Portsmouth may be able to challenge the imposition of a points penalty for going into administration, should such a penalty be ordered by the Premier League. Portsmouth are four points adrift at the foot of the table.
“The assumption that there is an automatic deduction of points has never been tested before but we will do our very best to avoid a deduction,” Andronikou said.
“Our solicitors believe there may be a slight opportunity but I don’t want to say anything more because that prejudices my position in achieving it. I would say everyone has taken for granted that there will be a deduction of nine points.”
Andronikou, speaking on BBC Radio 5 Live’s Sportsweek programme, said: “I would imagine [the debts] will bottom around £78m.
“We will know more towards the end of the week. There are lots of contingent creditors I need to look at. I will probably need another week to get to the bottom of it all and see the exact figures.”
Andronikou is investigating Portsmouth’s transfers in the hope of discovering how the club found themselves in such a mess, despite raising around £100m in player sales over the last 20 months.
“Everyone asks how Portsmouth can generate so many funds from player sales but be left with residual liabilities,” Andronikou said. “I am going to go through every transfer on a one-by-one basis. The transfers that have been reported in the press, I am told, aren’t actually the figures of the funds received by the club.
“The most difficult area to discuss at the moment are the cost, expenses, of selling each player. I will go through every single transaction and find out where each penny has been accounted for.”
Tottenham Hotspur v Everton – live!
Hit refresh for the latest entries or set your page to update automatically using the button below. Email any questions, thoughts or gags over to simon.burnton@guardian.co.uk
12.23pm: Everton are England’s form side at the moment, but then as anyone who had the extremely depressing misfortune of seeing their Europa League performance in Lisbon on Thursday will know, they have the potential to be utterly rubbish. Perhaps they are, at present, the footballing equivalent of Gina G, who hit the high notes in Blighty but was distinctly second best when called upon to represent her nation in Europe (if your stomach is strong enough you can watch her 1996 Eurovision performance, introduced by Virginia Bottomley, for chrissakes, here). One defeat in 12 is their current league run, though eagle-eyed stat-hawks will notice that they have won just one of their last seven away.
Spurs are still grumbling about their game at Goodison in December, where they fluffed a two-goal lead and a stoppage-time penalty to draw 2-2. They list Jermain Defoe as a doubt today, and give Peter Crouch a late fitness test, leaving the way clear for Roman Pavlyuchenko to continue his recent goalscoring run.
Kick-off is at 1pm but Simon will be here from 12.30pm to let you whether Tottenham can successfully reclaim fourth place from Manchester City.
If you’re looking for team news ahead of today’s game, you can check out our squad sheets right here. Whichever team Tottenham sends out, though, you have to wonder how much their routine has been disrupted after the club decided to close their training ground on Friday in a bid to contain a virus affecting players and staff.
James Callow reports: Harry Redknapp is hoping the virus sweeping through the club will not derail Tottenham Hotspur’s Champions League hopes as it did four years ago.
After several first-team players fell ill this week it was decided to close the indoor facilities at the Spurs Lodge training ground in Chigwell, Essex, for sterilisation. Redknapp instead held his pre-match media briefing at White Hart Lane ahead of Sunday’s home match with Everton.
Vedran Corluka and Wilson Palacios were the worst affected but could recover in time for what could be a key match in Spurs’ campaign to finish in the top four.
Read the rest of the article here
John Terry left empty-handed as Wayne Bridge gives him cold shoulder
Deposed England skipper John Terry endures miserable day after drubbing follows Wayne Bridge snub
It could have been two children on a school playing field. One was happy to shake hands and be friends, the other still bore a grudge. This was John Terry and Wayne Bridge yesterday.
They lined up against each other for the first time since the revelations that Terry had had an affair with Bridge’s former partner and mother of his child.
As part of the Premier League’s fair play campaign, players from each team are expected to shake hands with their opponents before the kick-off, but yesterday Bridge, the Manchester City player, just could not do it.
He made his feelings known during the week, telling the England manager Fabio Capello he could not bear to share a dressing room with Chelsea’s Terry and therefore did not want to be picked for the international team. Terry did hold out his hand and for a second it looked as though Bridge would do the same. But he pulled his arm away and stared the Chelsea captain straight in the eye.
If you blinked you missed it and Sky Sports, which had given the confrontation the big build-up, failed on this occasion to do an action replay… at least until half-time. YouTube had no such scruples and the video was soon posted. By the end of the 90 minutes there were hundreds of hits.
The build-up to the non-handshake was not quite on the scale of Nixon and Mao, or Rabin and Arafat, but viewers of Sky could have been forgiven for thinking it was a worldwide event.
Both managers were interviewed beforehand. Chelsea’s Carlo Ancelotti said he did not expect the atmosphere to affect his captain: “John Terry is professional and doesn’t have a problem in staying focused on the match. He has… a good mentality.” City manager Roberto Mancini urged defender Bridge to concentrate on the match, which came only 48 hours after he withdrew from England’s World Cup plans. Mancini said: “He is a strong character.”
The BBC was also all over the story.On its live football website, just before kick-off, an anonymous blogger remarked: “For once my wife wants to watch a ‘football’ match. I wonder how long she will last in front of the screen after the handshake/non-handshake.”
Ten minutes later another blogger on the same site was able to put the spat in context, writing: “My nephew is playing an under-11’s match later today against his ex-best friend, who he thinks stole his Creme Egg at school last week. Do you want me to report in on the handshake (or lack of)?”
Those in the ground played their part in the pantomime. When Terry, who lost the England captaincy for playing away with Vanessa Perroncel, touched the ball for the first time there were cheers. Thirty seconds later the boos rang out as Bridge played the ball out of defence, and for the rest of the match there were catcalls and whistles.
Sky commentators joined in, saying with all seriousness when City went 3-1 up, “what a great result for Wayne Bridge on this day of all days”. Seconds later Bridge was substituted as Mancini tried to put a stop to the panto.
Unfortunately for Chelsea, there was an extra scene when Michael Ballack became the second Chelsea player to be sent off, following Juliano Belletti’s red card, and City scored a fourth.
Bridge was over the moon and Terry sick as a parrot as the game ended 4-2 following a late Chelsea penalty.
Ryan Shawcross insists there was ‘no malice’ in tackle on Aaron Ramsey
• Stoke defender ‘deeply upset’ over Ramsey’s broken leg
• Shawcross ‘has no bad blood in him,’ says Tony Pulis
Stoke City’s Ryan Shawcross last night insisted there was “absolutely no malice” in the challenge on Aaron Ramsey which led to the Arsenal midfielder suffering a broken leg.
The 19-year-old Ramsey was taken to hospital after a tackle by Shawcross, who was later called up to the England squad to play Egypt next week, as the Gunners came from behind to win 3-1 at the Britannia Stadium.
Arsène Wenger, the Arsenal manager, was enraged by the tackle, which he described as “horrendous”, but in a statement issued by Shawcross, the player, who was sent off, is adamant there was no intent.
The statement read: “There was absolutely no malice in the challenge. I would never, ever go out to hurt a fellow professional. I am deeply upset that Aaron has suffered such a bad injury and my thoughts are with him. I would like to send him my best wishes too for a speedy recovery.”
The 22-year-old’s sentiments were echoed by his club, who added in the statement: “Stoke City would like to send their best wishes to Aaron Ramsey and Arsenal Football Club.”
They added: “The club do, however, wish to make it quite clear that there was absolutely no malice in the challenge from Ryan Shawcross which caused the injury.”
Tony Pulis said: “On behalf of everyone at Stoke City, we would like to express our deepest sympathy to Aaron and Arsenal at what has happened today.
“Our thoughts are with him and his family. We hope he makes a speedy recovery and everyone here wishes to see him back on the football field as soon as possible.”
The Stoke manager also defended Shawcross, adding: “Ryan Shawcross has no bad blood in him whatsoever. There is no way in a million years he would ever go out and try to hurt someone.
“The lad was heartbroken at what has happened, you could see as he came off the pitch that he was in tears and he feels devastated that Aaron has been so badly injured.”
Paul Hayward: Premier League must clean up its act
The Premier League have to decide whether they are a regulatory body or a secretariat overseeing a free-for-all
The most insidious deceit to invade English football’s phrase book in this age of boom and bust is still Leeds United’s post-implosion claim to have been “living the dream”. They were not. They were living the lie: the one that now stinks like a barrel of old skate at Portsmouth.
It was a feature of Britain’s suicidal recklessness in banking, the housing market and Premier League football that problem gambling was recast as entrepreneurship. The “living the dream” defence was filed, of course, by Peter Ridsdale, who is now distinguishing himself again at Cardiff City, Pompey’s victims in the 2008 FA Cup final. Ridsdale wanted to be seen as the guy who comes smiling out of a Monte Carlo casino at dawn with lipstick on his collar, champagne on his tongue and nothing in his wallet.
Except that it was never that innocent. Clubs lived the dream all over again, passing ownership along a shrouded line as if it were a Tom and Jerry time bomb, spending next year’s money and conning fans with messiah smiles. Of all the untruths we needed to expose as Pompey fell into the hands of the financial ambulance chasers on Friday, the first was that people buy football clubs for the hell of it and simply go giddy before losing control of their business bowels.
This is the lie that gets them off the hook. Time now to fix attention on the why and the how much. Why did Portsmouth change hands four times in seven months? Where did all the transfer and television money go? Around the Premier League, finance directors speculated last week that administration was the last outcome some at Fratton Park would have wanted because it means opening up the books to see who got what, and why.
The influx of FA Cup winning players pre-2008 was matched only in its pyrotechnic impact by the dispersal of those stars when reality bit. Some, such as the chief executive, Peter Storrie, were present for both eras, so their explanations would be welcome, now that Pompey fans no longer sing “there’s only one Peter Storrie”, as they have even in this wretched campaign.
But for Storrie and the previous owner, Alexandre Gaydamak, who is “owed” (love that word) £30.5m, to be asked these questions, there would have to be a desire by the other 19 clubs to hold football’s economics up to the light: to commission a full investigation into the Portsmouth scandal, then publish every word and number of the report. No data protection or companies law cop-outs, just the full train wreck, so every Pompey fan can see how they were mugged.
This is the moment when the Premier League have to decide whether they want to be a proper regulatory body or a secretariat overseeing a free-for-all. While they decide whether to be more like the NFL or NBA in America or stay as the TV deal-makers in a hucksters’ paradise they will hope that the punters in Hong Kong, Abu Dhabi and Africa have not noticed that one of the 20 masters of the universe hasn’t got 30p to use the loo at a London station.
Richard Scudamore, the genius negotiator who arranged the candy rain of huge global TV contracts, is often mistakenly cast as the supremo when he’s really the money-getter in a modest London office. Only the clubs themselves can agree to hose out their stables. Scudamore is their servant, not their master.
But he, too, now has a credibility problem as he racks up the air miles. The Premier League is sold abroad as a brand and a concept: a miracle of loan-fuelled expansion. In a feature for the Observer before Christmas he told me: “The last 10 years have been about globalisation. We had a couple of clubs who were known around the world – Liverpool and Man Utd. Ten years on, I go to places in Asia where they can name the Birmingham side, name the Hull side, name the substitutes, discuss the performance of the Wigan left‑midfielder from two weeks ago.
“The foreign owners instil interest in their countries along with foreign players. If Park [Ji-sung] isn’t playing for Man Utd and the Bolton Korean guy [Lee Chung-yong] is playing then all of a sudden Bolton overtake Man Utd in the Korean viewing figures.”
No one could doubt the success of this new imperialism but it still requires the drama not to serve as a haven for Thaksin Shinawatra or people who want to make transfer money disappear. It must not be, in other words, a puppet show of exploitation and lies.
Change is coming anyway. Uefa’s machine guns are trained on English debt, which, according to the European governing body’s report, accounts for 56% of the continent’s liabilities. What a party that was, though. Portsmouth’s fans got a whole day out at Wembley and all they had to agree to in return was the complete violation of their club.
Paul Hayward: Bellamy shakes Terry’s world
John Terry suffered a trying day on the field and then had to put up with an aside from Craig Bellamy
Wayne Bridge declined to shake John Terry’s hand, so Manchester City shook Chelsea by the throat instead, shocking the Premier League leaders with a 4-2 victory, before adding insult to injury, courtesy of Craig Bellamy, who said: “Everybody in football knows what John Terry is like off the field.”
Bellamy, a professional agent provocateur who scored twice as Chelsea were reduced to nine men by the dismissals of Juliano Belletti and Michael Ballack in a volcanic second-half, qualified that chomp at Terry’s reputation, saying: “On the field he’s an outstanding player and captain for Chelsea.” But it was the day’s clearest sign that for City this match between first and fifth in the title race was personal.
Terry may have got the girl but Bridge took home the points in the Cold War between two former friends who will share no more family days out to Thorpe Park or time in England colours. The Chelsea man will at least keep playing for his country, though Fabio Capello made plain last night that it will not be as captain as long as the Italian remains in charge.
“Until the World Cup, John Terry will not be the captain again,” Capello said. “After the World Cup? If I remain as England manager? I think not. I asked for the captain to set an example for the young people; for the children and the fans. What he did was not good. I told him this and he understood.”
City’s biggest win under Roberto Mancini coincided with the heftiest setback of Carlo Ancelotti’s first season at Stamford Bridge and raised fresh concerns about Terry’s capacity to ignore his demons. He was beaten by Carlos Tevez in a midfield tussle that led to City’s equaliser.
One Chelsea player clearly sympathetic to Bridge was the stand-in goalkeeper, Henrique Hilário, whose reactions to City’s first two goals will have the Stamford Bridge medics swarming round the injured Petr Cech to restore his fitness. First Hilário was beaten by a weak bobbling shot from Tevez moments before half-time, then he allowed Bellamy to shoot across him from an acute angle to give City a 52nd-minute lead.
Bridge and Terry were not the only players in recovery mode. Tevez had only just returned from Argentina and his prematurely born child. El Apache is a wonderful advert for jet lag. He skinned Terry and Ricardo Carvalho for his first strike, then put City 3-1 in front from the penalty spot after Belletti had been shown the red card for felling Gareth Barry. Tevez was also the victim of a vicious hack by Ballack, which removed the German midfielder with nine minutes left.
The perverse importance attached to a handshake in our society – where feigned respect is preferred to an honest display of loathing – prompted nearly 42,000 spectators and millions more around the world to lock their gaze on the pre-match ceremony of the away team filing past the home side and extending palms.
The predicted boycott of Terry by five City players did not materialise and only Bridge declined to press the flesh. The former Chelsea left-back reached out a hand but waved it under Terry’s outstretched fingers, which was consistent with his desire not to share a plane, hotel or dressing room with the sacked England captain at the World Cup.
There were shades of Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle in Terry’s Mohican hairdo. Both sides have assumed aggressive postures, with aides briefing the press as if this were Alastair Darling versus Gordon Brown. Bridge, the Terry camp said, was a “bottler” who refused to return his old mate’s calls. Bridge was “heartbroken” and a victim of betrayal who had been forced out of international football. Mancini said: “I hope he can play in the national team but the decision is his.”
As this conflict has been redolent of the schoolyard, there were plenty here hoping to shout “scrap” when Terry and Bridge collided, but the showdown never came. Left-backs and centre-halves on opposing teams seldom enter one another’s airspace and these two kept apart. “I’m not interested,” said Ancelotti when asked to comment on Terry’s handling of his day from hell. He is plainly sick of the feud.
Each Bridge touch was booed and every Terry contribution was cheered in this battle of new wealth and even newer wealth, which started with City hiding in their own half and emerging only intermittently to feed Tevez, the lone-striker in a 4-5-1 formation. City are like Mancini’s wardrobe. The manager’s £800 overcoat and £10 club scarf are emblematic of the mix of materials he has to work with as he seeks to balance enterprise and defensive solidity. But any suggestion that Mancini was about to be impeached for excessive caution was blown away by Tevez and Bellamy, who shared the goalscoring duties in the absence of the suspended Emmanuel Adebayorcorrect.
In four days, Ancelotti has been beaten by one former Internazionale manager (Mancini) and a current one (José Mourinho) who would not look out of place spending City’s vast oil reservoir of transfer money. This double blow is bound to encourage conjecture about the damaging effect of the Terry and Ashley Cole exposés, however peripheral (and depressing) they may seem.
Bridge left the field with an injury on 78 minutes, but it was his hoof upfield that deceived Mikel John Obi into heading backwards for Tevez to pounce on Terry. Revenge by aerial bombardment is a familiar tactic. Then along came Bellamy to really put the boot in. It’s an odd day when he sets the bar for rectitude.
Arsène Wenger tears into tackle that shattered Aaron Ramsey’s leg
• Arsenal manager calls Ryan Shawcross tackle ‘horrendous’
• ‘If I have to live with that, I don’t want to be involved’
Arsenal snatched one of the most dramatic victories of the season at the Britannia Stadium to move within three points of the league leaders, Chelsea, but Arsène Wenger said it was “impossible to enjoy it” in view of the broken leg suffered by Aaron Ramsey under challenge by Ryan Shawcross, who was sent off and left the pitch in tears after seeing the seriousness of what he had done.
Wenger described Ramsey’s injury as “horrendous” and the tackle that caused it “unacceptable”, adding it was “ridiculous” that Shawcross would be suspended for only three matches. The Arsenal manager was so upset by what had happened to his 19-year-old midfielder that he preferred to concentrate on that, rather than the win secured by two late goals, in the 90th minute and the fourth minute of added time.
“It is a bad break, and Aaron will be transferred to hospital in London to see if emergency surgery is needed”, he said. “This is a young player who has been kicked out of the game. I’m shocked, that wasn’t football. If I have to live with that, I don’t want to be involved in the game. My players were too upset to celebrate.”
For Wenger and the Arsenal team, the injury was horribly reminiscent of the compound fracture suffered by Eduardo at Birmingham in 2008 and, as at St Andrew’s, Ramsey’s plight was such that players from both sides turned away from the sight, and at least two were ill on the pitch.
Wenger said: “This is the third player – Eduardo, Diaby and now Ramsey – we’ve lost to tackles that are unacceptable, and spare me the articles tomorrow about how nice Shawcross is because we had all that with Eduardo.”
Tony Pulis, the Stoke manager, countered that Wenger had no proper knowledge of his player’s character: “The game pales into insignificance. Obviously it’s a bad break and it was a bad challenge. The boy is a fellow Welshman and I’m devastated because he’s a great player who has the world at his feet. But Ryan has come off the pitch crying and he’s broken-hearted. I know him well, he’s got no bad blood in him, and there’s no way he’d set out to hurt a fellow professional.”
Wenger was proud of the way his team recovered their composure sufficiently to win 3-1 with a late penalty from Cesc Fábregas and an even later tap-in from Thomas Vermaelen. Of his team’s title prospects, he said: “This has strengthened our belief and our determination.”
Stoke City 1-3 Arsenal | Premier League match report
Arsenal gained the victory they needed to take full advantage of Chelsea’s defeat earlier in the day, and move to within three points of the league leaders, but their celebrations were muted after a serious injury sustained by Aaron Ramsey, who was carried off after an incident that evoked horrible memories of Eduardo’s compound fracture at Birmingham in 2008.
Ryan Shawcross was sent off for the challenge, and left the pitch visibly sickened by what he had done. To their credit, Arsenal recovered from the shock sufficiently to score twice at the death, with a penalty from Cesc Fábregas and a tap-in from Thomas Vermaelen.
It was a toss up which side came into the game with higher morale – Stoke unbeaten in 2010 or Arsenal, who had thrust themselves back into title contention with successive victories.
Tony Pulis came down on the side of boldness, recalling Abdou Faye and Andy Wilkinson in defence after suspension in the strongest available line-up. Injuries denied Arsenal important players in Andrey Arshavin, William Gallas, Robin Van Persie and Abou Diaby, creating a starting place for Sol Campbell but not for Theo Walcott, who was again on the bench, as was Eduardo, who is still short of match fitness.
One would have thought they must have practiced ways of countering Rory Delap’s threat all week, but if they had, it was to no avail. Just seven minutes had elapsed when Delap hurled the ball in from the right and Shawcross got to it ahead of Bacary Sagna, redirecting it to the far post, where Danny Pugh headed home at perfunctory range. How the home crowd loved that, taunting Arsène Wenger, who has been critical of Stoke’s methods, with choruses of: “We only score from our throw-ins.”
Pulis won’t apologise for any of that of course, nor does he need to, having devised an uncommonly effective use of limited resources. The goal gave his team a lift, and the initiative, putting Arsenal on the back foot, and the game was 25 minutes old before Fábregas produced their first strike at goal, from distance.
It met with no success, but it did spark Arsenal into action, and after 31 minutes they drew level, Nicolas Bendtner bisecting the centre-halves to get to Fábregas’s right-wing cross and score with a towering header from 10 yards. Thomas Sorensen was left with no chance, the ball beating him high to his left.
Arsenal thought they should have had a penalty four minutes into the second half when Ramsey, after receiving a short through pass from Fábregas, toppled 12 yards out under Faye’s challenge. The referee concluded, not unreasonably, that the defender had hustled for possession legitimately and that the Welshman had fallen unnecessarily.
After Stoke’s assertive start, the initiative had changed sides, with Fábregas increasingly influential, and just short of the hour mark Sorensen was happy to touch over Emmanuel Eboué’s thunderous drive from the edge of the area.
Arsenal’s economical, progressive passing was testing the stamina of their opponents who had battled for two hours in their midweek FA Cup replay defeat of Manchester City and Danny Collins was introduced from the bench on the hour.
Stoke still had their moments, notably when Almunia dropped another Exocet from Delap, and the match was boiling towards an intriguing climax when the appetite for it was dulled by Ramsey’s horrible injury. Such was its seriousness that at least two players were ill on the pitch and it was five minutes before the young midfielder could be carried off, to be replaced by Tomas Rosicky.
Inevitably the atmosphere changed – and not for the better. The Arsenal fans called the opposition “scum”, while the home crowd lionised Shawcross by chanting his name.
Stoke were consigned to their first defeat in 12 games when a handball by Pugh allowed Fábregas to score from the spot in the 90th minute and Sorensen’s failure to hold Rosicky’s shot enabled Thomas Vermaelen to make it 3-1 in added time.
THE FANS’ PLAYER RATINGS AND VERDICT
Chris Baldwin, Stoke.VitalFootball.co.uk I was too far away from the Shawcross incident to judge, but from where I was there certainly didn’t seem to be any malice in the tackle on Ramsey. Both went in hard, though, and the outcome ruined the game. We had been defending well and at 1-1 had more than a chance to get something. Up front we had a problem with Fuller and Sidibé, neither of whom looked switched on, probably as a result of their midweek exertions. Arsenal struggled with Delap’s throws – you would have thought they would have known what to expect. The penalty looked a bit harsh. I saw the arm go up and I suppose on that score I can’t have too many complaints.
The fan’s player ratings Sorensen 7; Wilkinson 7, Shawcross 5, Faye 6 (Collins 60 6), Huth 7; Delap 7, Whitehead 7 (Lawrence 77 6), Whelan 7, Pugh 7; Sidibé 6, Fuller 6 (Tuncay 80 6)
Toby Moses, Observer reader I’ve got nothing against the physical side of the game, but questions need to be asked about where to draw the line with the old ‘Arsenal don’t like it up ‘em’ mantra that teams trot out. By all means go in hard and fair, but it shouldn’t mean clubs have a free pass to kick us all over the pitch. Maybe if the refs cracked down, players like Shawcross wouldn’t imagine they can get away with a tackle that has left a fantastically talented, British, teenager’s career in jeopardy. Three time in the space of a few years doesn’t seem like a coincidence to me. Frankly the result pales into insignificance.
The fan’s player ratings Almunia 6; Sagna 7, Vermaelen 7, Campbell 7, Clichy 7; Song 7; Eboué 7 (Walcott 75 n/a), Fábregas 8, Ramsey 8, (Rosicky 69 7), Nasri 7 (Eduardo 83 n/a); Bendtner 8
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