Peter Crouch marked a return to the Stoke City starting line-up by scoring within one-minute against Arsenal during the weekend.
This impressive start helped them get a 3-2 victory, but Stoke appeared on the way to an even better result when they were leading 3-0 at half-time. Arsenal came into the encounter with renewed confidence after the run of three consecutive victories in which they conceded no goals. The matches against Southampton and Borussia Dortmund were seen as major tests for Arsene Wenger’s team but they passed this with flying colours. As is the case with this campaign, consistency proved hard for the North London outfit on Saturday.
Crouch, who provided a perfect target man, scored within 30 seconds of the kick-off. Summer signing Bojan Krkic has been looking highly impressive in the last few matches. He was at the forefront of everything good done by Mark Hughes’ men. He got his just reward in the 35th minute while Jonathan Walters scored just at half-time to send the home fans jumping up and down. Even though Arsenal have struggled to get results at the Britannia stadium in the last few years, few would have predicted this unbelievable score at half-time. Arsenal came close to staging a remarkable comeback after goals from Santi Cazorla and Aaron Ramsey.
“That was a great start, an incredible first half. In the end it was a little bit backs-to-the-wall but we got the result.I’ve not been playing for the past few games so it was important to get off to a good start and 20 seconds in it was a dream start,” said Crouch. This victory sees Stoke move to 12th place in the table. This victory was also highly crucial given that the potters suffered three consecutive league defeats prior to this match.