Ryan Shawcross’ e-mail inbox is full. Tony Pulis, his Stoke City manager, has revealed that the defender has received around 300 messages of support from Arsenal supporters after his tackle broke Aaron Ramsey’s leg at the Britannia Stadium last weekend. Either Arsène Wenger’s laptop isn’t working, or he still hasn’t got over it.
Ramsey’s injury was horrific, a devastating blow to a young player who was quickly becoming a vital part of both his club and country’s plans. The Welshman faces a long, sometimes rocky road to recovery, but sadly these things happen in football, and pinpointing the clearly devastated Shawcross as anything other than an unfortunate party in this sorry episode is wrong. If Wenger is as intelligent as everyone seems to think he is, he’ll come to that conclusion too.
Yes, Stoke are physical, Pulis won’t deny that, but they are also determined, committed and a welcome addition to the Premier League. A bookmaker paid out on them getting relegated after a 3-1 defeat to Bolton on the opening day of their debut 2008/09 campaign; they’ve never looked like going down in the 18 months since.
They make no apologies for their approach. Ball boys are issued with towels in a bid to aide Rory Delap’s long throws, the Britannia Stadium crowd – the noisiest in the division according to a survey last season – get on top of their more illustrious opponents at home matches and each game becomes a battle. But do not all teams play to their strengths?
Arsenal like to keep the ball, Manchester United look to Wayne Rooney and Liverpool are driven on by Steven Gerrard. Stoke are different, but is that necessarily bad?
Of course if Stoke’s opponents were sustaining injuries like Ramsey’s every week then it would be a different matter, but the Potters have made nowhere near the most amount of tackles in the division, that list is headed by Liverpool, and like Stoke, most of those challenges have been hard but fair. Unlike Stoke, one of the Reds’ challenges hasn’t resulted in a sickening injury.
Many claim that Wenger’s ire towards Shawcross is exacerbated by the defender’s previous tussles with the Frenchman’s former forwards Francis Jeffers – then playing for Sheffield Wednesday in 2007 – and Emmanuel Adebayor last season, but at just 22 it would be unrealistic to expect Shawcross to be the finished article yet, and his tackling and all-round play will improve with age. Fabio Capello will have seen something in him anyway, judging by his call up to England squad in the immediate hours that followed the Ramsey challenge.
A measure of Stoke’s progress can be found this weekend, when they head to Chelsea for an FA Cup quarter-final tie having beaten the likes of Arsenal – sour grapes Arsène? – and Manchester City on the way.
An unlikely success would be hugely deserved for Pulis and the Potters, with an appearance at a Wembley semi-final a new high point in two years that have seen the club grow and grow.
Their style makes them difficult to beat – Carlo Ancelotti will find that out on Sunday – but Stoke shouldn’t have to apologise for that.
Their strength is their strength, and when things go as drastically wrong as they did for Shawcross, Ramsey and for football at the weekend, it takes an even greater strength to carry on regardless.
Pulis and his team might be about to discover just how strong they really are.
Mark Jones
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