Arsenal were absolutely amazing in todays game against Stoke and it looked like a practise game against an U21 side, except for the brilliant performance of the Stoke goalkeeper Jack Butland. He denied our strikers time and time again, and once our strikers learn to beat keepers like that we will win by cricket scores every week.
Mark Hughes was very unhappy with his team’s performance but agreed that Butland would not be put in that position every week. “Today we weren’t good enough to go toe-to-toe with a very good Arsenal team,” Hughes said.
“We weren’t bright enough in our defensive work. We allowed good players time and space to create and move.
“We just didn’t get to the source of the problem. We didn’t close people down.”
“Jack Butland has shown what an outstanding young keeper he is,” Hughes continued. “As the season progresses we fully expect he won’t have as many opportunities to be man of the match. That’s our aim. At the moment he’s having too much to do.
“That’s a positive, probably the only other one was the reintroduction of Bojan. We’re delighted to see him back. On a day of negatives, those were the two highs for us.”
The two highs for us was the two times that Walcott and Giroud managed to get past Butland, while Petr Cech had no chance whatsoever to be man of the match as he hardly touched the ball!
We are on our way to the top!