Sunday Supplement - Contact

Had my grumble.

If you are going to cointact them, please make your email eloquent :-)

u2us@skysports.com
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Hi all

I watch the majority of football related on Sky Sports, some great programmes and its always interesting to hear the views and input of journalists and what they think on the major topics of the game during the week.

However again this morning I've heard Patrick Collins again attacking my club (Stoke City) on a discussion that had nothing to do with Stoke, which seems to be a weekly thing for him and is all round poor journalism - he seems to have another agenda that he wishes to pursue.

This week its Stoke and Blackburns fault that England are a poor team, other weeks its tackling by Stoke destroying the game, other weeks its ugly long ball football, other weeks its aggressive tactics, blah blah...etc - somebody should really inform Patrick that football is a game where teams are rewarded in points for how many times they score a goal, and for not conceding - nowhere in the rules does it reward a club for how many passes they complete to achieve that, nor does it prescribe how a team should score or defend said goals.

The rules basically set out what is or isn't fair play, and even puts 4 match officials in charge of the game to ensure that the rules are adhered to - Stoke City seme to manage to pick up points within these rules, and do quite well out of it, so I'm not entirely sure what his issues are. He needs to get over them though!

Its no major surprise that Patrick is an Arsenal fan, and is a paid up member of the Arsene Wenger fan club. Tippy tappy football that is lovely to watch, but as the trophy cabinet at Arsenal in recent years will point out, doesn't seem to win a great deal.

I'm sure he would point to Barcelona, who play beautiful football, but they also have a few in the team that are not scared to put a foot in (Puyol et al) and add steel to the team. And when Stoke can afford to spend £30-£40million on one player, perhaps you will see a more expansive style of football.

Stoke may not be his cup of tea to watch, but his continued snipes and digs are quite pathetic and really put him in a light of a bitter idealist who cannot stand the thought of 'weaker' teams standing up to any of the supposed 'big 4'. Interesting you never see Chelsea, Liverpool or especially Man Utd complain about Stoke, indeed the latter proabably stand up to Stoke more than any other team in the league and have won every game...

One final observation - Patrick says that teams like Stoke and Blackburn are at fault for Englands recent woes, despite them being full of players from other teams (when was the last Stoke/Blackburn player to be selected?) - I would argue the case that if England set up like Stoke or Blackburn and became incredibly difficult to beat, were tough, physical and threatened from set pieces the perhaps we would enjoy more success. I would hope it would be better than Walcott/Lennon/Downing/G Johnson/Barry and the others who constantly lose the ball trying to play tip tap football, and I am sure that strikers like Crouch/Rooney/Carroll even Gerard would thrive on balls being delivered into the box.

Yours in sport