Pulis tells Wenger: You can’t fool us

Tony Pulis has reacted to the outburst from Arsene Wenger with a cool and calm response in stark contrast to the rantings of the Arsenal manager.

We make no apology in reprinting the whole of the statement issued on the Stoke City official site:

‘Most Managers up and down the country are very protective of their Football Clubs and that protection is usually at its height in ‘after game interviews’, where we defend our team’s performances and our players’ mistakes in every way possible – from blaming referees not seeing players’ indiscretions and so on. We have every angle covered.

In Stoke-on-Trent on Saturday evening Mr Wenger talked openly about Arsenal’s encounter with Stoke, as being a ‘typical English encounter’. He commended my team’s organisation, my team’s commitment and confessed that on the day Stoke City thoroughly deserved to win the game. Very open and very honest.

Over the weekend Arsenal have been criticised by the media over their commitment to not only our game, but also previous games they have been involved in.

In London 48 hours later and 150 miles away from Stoke-on-Trent, Mr Wenger changed tact and has tried to rewrite history. His comments about my team are there for everybody to read and certainly made me smile, along with I’m sure 27,000 supporters at the game, millions of TV viewers and the massed press who interviewed him after the game. Remember there was only one red card on Saturday and the last time I watched the game it certainly was not a Stoke City player who received it.

As for Rory Delap’s challenges on Theo Walcott and Bacary Sanga – Rory is as honest and committed as they come, they were free kicks, but Rory would never purposely go out to injure a fellow professional – it’s just not in Rory’s nature. Don’t forget not so long ago Rory was sitting in a hospital bed with a double fracture. Further as I recall the game Emmanuel Adebayor was booked for a chest-high challenge on Ryan Shawcross.

I and my Football Club have tremendous respect for Mr Wenger and Arsenal Football Club, but as Mr Wenger is such a learned professional and on a great day in American electoral history, I would like to remind him of Abraham Lincoln’s great quotation, ‘You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.’

Tony Pulis