I wanted to slap Griffin too (From Northwich Guardian)

West Ham United 2 Stoke City 1: reaction

12:11pm Friday 2nd January 2009

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YOU won’t catch me, or indeed any genuine Stoke fan, slagging off Ricardo Fuller despite his actions at Upton Park.

For any neutral, his slap of his captain Andy Griffin is apparently a hilarious incident, but for most Stokies it’s hard to muster more than an uncomfortable giggle.

Slapping your skipper does not help team spirit, even if the ref misses it and you escape a red card.

When he does spot it and you’re sent down the tunnel, it turns a bad situation into a terrible one.

But you can understand the frustration of teammates with bad defending that led to the Stoke equalising goal. Hell, I would have wanted to slap Griffin too.

You can understand the frustration of teammates with bad defending that led to the Stoke equalising goal. Hell, I would have wanted to slap Griffin too.

Ian Probert believes there's more to the Fuller sending off than meets the eye

Griffin basically fell over under a challenge from Carlton Cole, hit his attempted clearance against the forward and then could not get up in time to stop the forward shooting past Sorensen.

Now apparently Griff was playing despite an injury and may have suffered another tweak before the second half started, going out in Pulis’ words to see how it went for a few minutes.

Someone on the medical team should have realised that was asking for trouble and put Andrew Davies on in his place.

Instead we blew the advantage of a first half in which Sorensen hardly had a save to make and potentially a first three points away from home.

It’s too late to change that now, but not too late to solve the underlying problem that led to the sending off.

Stoke rely too much on a few key players and probably on Ric more than anyone else.

If he is grumpy, sulky or any of the other attitudes people are attributing to him, it may be that the pressure of being the Potters’ talisman is playing on his mind.

Has anyone noticed how his grumpiness is more apparent when he is starved of the ball? Without Lawrence in the team, he hardly ever gets it played to his feet.

Without him for the next three games and with both Sidibe and Kitson injured, we need Liam back and we need to buy a striker fast.