Ahead of Arsenal’s match against Stoke on Saturday, Arsene Wenger sang the Potters’ praises, claiming that he believes their technical ability has greatly improved over the last few seasons.
Arsenal and Stoke have a turbulent past. After Ryan Shawcross broke Aaron Ramsey’s leg, regular football rivalry developed into genuine hatred. This wasn’t helped from an Arsenal point of view as Stoke seemed to consistently get results whenever we played at their ground, usually as the result of long balls, which we quickly labeled as rugby tactics.
However, Wenger believes their style has developed over recent seasons and they’re now playing football, rather than relying on set pieces and long throw ins to grab a lucky goal. Now, they can keep the ball and play passing football.
“They are team with a good culture of the Premier League, they know how to behave and they have experience,” he said. “They have been here a long time in the Premier League and they have improved their technical quality.”
Wenger believes the addition of several technically gifted players has been crucial in this metamorphosis Stoke’s undergone, saying, “They have Afellay, Bojan, Shaqiri, Diouf up front and Charlie Adam in midfield. They have a lot of technical players that can give you problems.
“What we want is to focus on our own performance as we want to take off at home now. We had two good away games with positive results in difficult places and we know at home we can be efficient against anybody.”
The boss continued, “They have always had good teams and overall when we go to Stoke they are always specially motivated against us. There is a little bit of history because of what happened and overall it was always very difficult for us.
“For me there was never bad blood, it was just a game that was always very difficult for us to play. But I always focus on playing football and trying to get my team to play as well as we can.”
Arsenal have only managed to win one point at home so far this season and haven’t scored at all. Hopefully, with no further injury worries for Saturday, we should be back in form.