Weak Arsenal thrown into more turmoil

THEY are credited with playing the most eye-catching football in England, a team that can out-play anybody when the mood takes them.

But just when will Arsene Wenger realise that his experiment of putting style first and substance nowhere in particular is completely unsuited to any team aiming to win the Premier League?

This defeat was utterly predictable from the moment Rory Delap first propelled his long throw-in after 10 minutes: the ball evaded every Arsenal defender and left Ricardo Fuller to direct a glancing header into the unguarded far corner of Manuel Almunia’s goal.

By that stage, Wenger’s team of purists had already appeared spooked by the hostile atmosphere inside Stoke’s windswept stadium. Emmanuel Adebayor looked as though this was the last place on earth he wanted to be and the rest of Wenger’s players resembled young boys lost in the fog.

Three days after surrendering a 4-2 lead against Tottenham to draw, Arsenal suffered their third league defeat of the season against Tony Pulis’s team and, with Manchester United due at the Emirates next Saturday, Wenger also had to watch as Adebayor, Bacary Sagna and Theo Walcott left the field injured, with Robin van Persie petulantly earning a red card for barging goalkeeper Thomas Sorensen to the ground.

It was a particularly bad day for Arsenal. All of their frailties were exposed by Stoke’s committed players and Sorensen suggested that Wenger’s team lack the resolve required to mount a serious bid for the title.

“I’ve played against Arsenal a lot of times and I expected much more of them,” Sorensen said. “They have excellent players, but they didn’t find the fifth gear they normally do and once we got the second goal, it felt like we were cruising because they totally lost belief. I think they expected a bit of an easier ride, but no-one’s going to get that here.

“With the way the other teams are playing, it’s going to be really hard for Arsenal now. They have shown in the past that they are a fantastic football side, but they are just lacking that bit of physicality.

“When Chelsea came here, they matched us in the challenges, whereas Arsenal weren’t quite there. That’s the difference, they lack that bit of spine that you need. They want to play all the time, but sometimes you have to work hard and earn the opportunity to play your football.”

That has been Arsenal’s problem ever since they became the ‘Invincibles’ by winning the Premier League title with an unbeaten record in the 2003-04 season. Since then, Wenger has become entranced by the notion of building a team so aesthetically beautiful that he has forgotten about the steel required to knit it all together.

When defenders cannot even master the basics of defending a throw-in, who cares how many passes your midfielders can spray around?

Both of Stoke’s goals came from Delap’s throw-ins. Having failed to keep out Fuller’s header, Arsenal then allowed Seyi Olofinjana to bundle home another throw-in on 73 minutes before Gael Clichy’s deflected shot in injury-time reduced the arrears.

It was amateurish defending throughout by the visitors, though, and not something likely to have happened in the days of Adams, Bould, Keown, Winterburn, Dixon et al.

Where do Arsenal go from here? Defeat at home to United on Saturday will be the final nail in their title coffin and Wenger admits that his team no longer has a margin for error.

“I don’t know how many more defeats we can afford,” Wenger said with a shrug. “We just have to win our next game and we have a chance again when we play United. What manager would tell you they can afford to lose a game? You can never afford to lose. We just want to win.”

REFEREE: Rob Style (Hamsphire) 7: Not had the best season so far, to say the least, but Styles remained under the radar in this game and only surfaced when he had to, as when he quite rightly dismissed the idiotic van Persie.

MATCH RATING: **** Terrible day for Arsenal, but the raucous atmosphere inside the Britannia and the passionate performances of the Stoke players made for a terrific game with the end result resembling an FA Cup giant-killing.