Ahead of Arsenal’s clash with Stoke City this weekend, manager Arsene Wenger has praised Stoke’s technical ability.
Stoke were often classed as a physical side under previous manager Tony Pulis, a side has caused Arsenal problems in the past but current manager Mark Hughes has added more technically gifted players to his Stoke side.
Mark Hughes was busy over the summer and added some very technically gifted players including former Barcelona player Ibrahim Affelay (above) and Switzerland international Xherdan Shaqiri (below) as well as last season’s signings of Mame Biram Diouf and another former Barcelona player in Bojan.
In the last five meetings, 18 yellow cards have been produced between the sides and Wenger has denied that there is ‘bad blood’ between the sides, going on to praise Stoke’s new technical ability.
They are team with a good culture of the Premier League, they know how to behave and they have experience.
They have been here a long time in the Premier League and they have improved their technical quality.
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.
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 face Stoke City this Saturday in their first 15:00 kick-off of the season, with the club looking to pick up their third victory of the Premier League season.
