Over the last few years Arsenal fans have looked on an away game against Stoke City in much the same way that Flash Gordon felt when he had to stick his hand in that old tree stump that had a horrible pain and death inflicting creature lurking somewhere in the depths.
And it seems that some of us still do but I think that we do not really need to be so worried as Arsenal prepare for the trip to the Potteries tomorrow. I will give you a couple of reasons why I am confident that Arsebnal will come back to north London tomorrow in good spirits.
The first is that Stoke under Mark Hughes are no longer the bruising and battling long ball specialists that used to give us so much trouble in the Tony Pulis days. So that means it is going to be a game of football rather than Rugby tomorrow and you know that this suits Arsenal better, even though we are much more capable of dealing with a battle these days.
The second is that Arsenal have proved over the last year or so that we react well to a bad result, poor performance or some other kind of adversity. In fact we are at out best when something has gone wrong and after Liverpool hit us with a late equaliser on Wednesday I reckon every single player is going to be up for it.
Beware Stoke because we are coming for you!