In true Stoke style, if we are to go down, we should do it the Stoke way.
Following a series of improbable results we sit above the relegation spots by one point and all this in spite of a horrendous goal difference
Our final away game to a Swansea side in flip flops and factor fifty goes incredibly: two up at halftime!
The scores are going our way elsewhere too
Then the second half we conceded two goals, one a penalty from a blatant dive, the other offside. Charlie is booked twice for protesting both and we go down to ten men. Huddersfield equalise. The tension mounts
Into the last ten and our brave troops hustle and bustle, the game end to end. Down goes Jese in the penalty area, clear foul....not given
Last five minutes the ten men force a corner and Ryan leaps like a salmon and bosts the back of the net with a head like a kick! 2-3…!
Moving into time added on a simple back pass to Butland, in surely his last game with Gareth Southgate Badger in the stands, miskicks into the path of Wilfred Boneidle Bony and ricochets into the empty net via said Wilf's face 3-3
Into extra time and we're still up! Allen's running around like a headless chicken, Ryan fighting like a bulldog, it's all tension and fretting!
Swansea win a corner, lazily swung in, Ryan tusslels with Boneidle....penalty! Wilf takes, jack as per fucking usual Butland goes right, ball goes left! 3-3!
Dying seconds, Diouf steals the ball from their last man, races towards goal, skips past the keeper and from a difficult angle almost breaks the corner flag in the opposite corner of the Swansea half, no mean feat just ten yards from an empty net.
The final whistle sits in the ref's mouth and he's almost about to blow, when Geoff Stelling almost is in apoplexy as he announces a penalty to........ Huddersfield.....who convert the penalty....replays show no contact between attacker and defender
The peeps peep from the final whistle and our ten year stay is over in England's top flight
If Carling did relegations and were also utter, utter spiteful cunts
That my friends, is the Stoke way! To succeed against all the odds and finally, with the prize within their reach they snatch failure from the hands of victory 😬