On Stanley Matthews Day, Tony Pulis celebrated his 300th game in charge of Stoke with a comfortable and comprehensive 3-0 win over Blackburn, with the third and best goal being scored by a player he plucked from obscurity, revitalised and propelled to the verge of the England Team, a goal befitting the celebration of Sir Stanley’s life.

My god, what an awful, awful game… Stoke and Sunderland both contributed to possibly the worst performance of the season and the fact it was live on ESPN for the World to see leaves me a little embaressed to be honest. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not ashamed of my team, I just know they can play so much better, we were 3-0 up at half time against Fulham, great performance, hell our last game saw us beat Arsenal 3-1!!

It’s the FA Cup, it’s the 4th Round, I think we all know what happens next, Stoke have struggled, over my lifetime certainly, to make any impression on this prestigious competition so my expectations weren’t exactly high for our home encounter with Arsenal. It was a good day for Stoke which was made even better by us winning the game comfortably and beating Arsenal at their own game with two sucker punch goals coming from quick counter attacks – in fact, had decisions gone our way the score could have been 5-0, I imagine Arséne would have moaned about more than the pitch had that happened though..

So it’s Stoke this time who grab the last minute goal – makes a nice change.. The game itself was woeful, Stoke seemed to regress to our most basic of tactics (if you can call them that) of hoofing the ball forward at any opportunity. Just when you think we are turning a corner with our style, we have a performance like that to bring us back down to Earth with an almighty thud, it was so disappointing, especially given that we looked so good against Fulham.

There's not been too much festive cheer in the Potteries after some poor results - ironically, the games against Villa and Man City have seen us play some of our best football this season and argueably last too - we just haven't taken our chances.

Stoke were cruelly denied a perfectly good goal as they had the better of the play at Villa Park, but once again fell foul of another poor refereeing decision.

Just a little bit of fun in reaction to the alleged goings on after the Arsenal game - to the tune of Shakin Stevens' Merry Christmas Everyone

Memories of last seasons capitulation were all too fresh in my mind before this game, coupled with the fact Arsenal would be going all out for a win, so all in all I was probably not too disheartened by the final score.

Considering this was a scoreless draw it was a pretty entertaining game with Stoke perhaps feeling a little unlucky not to come away with all 3 points - overall some decent football played too which was the best thing to come out of the afternoon...

I imagine Paul Hart would have expected Tony Pulis to turn up to his post match interview wearing an eye patch such was Stoke’s fortune at winning a game, on the balance of play, we really didn’t deserve to.

A great and very welcomed 3 points but there are still a number of key themes to be addressed; though whilst the results are still good it is hard to justify making such a big deal about them but I really do think there are problems.