Arsenal return to top of the table after Stoke stalemate

Stoke City 0 Arsenal 0

Trips to Stoke have been the stuff of nightmares for Arsène Wenger but this game will not live long in the memory, never mind keep the Arsenal manager awake. In the end it was neither the big step forward Wenger had hoped for nor the couple of paces back that would have left Arsenal open to the same old accusations about their lack of stomach for a fight.

Perhaps in the context of what has happened to Arsenal at the Britannia Stadium a point should be cherished, especially on an afternoon when the temperature struggled to get above freezing and snow was shoved up against the advertising hoardings.

Yet while all the ingredients were there for Stoke to make life uncomfortable it was not until the final moments when Wenger's side looked really vulnerable. Jon Walters' glancing header was cleared off the line by Aaron Ramsey and Petr Cech, who had already produced a couple of fine saves, stuck out a leg to keep out Joselu's close-range effort.

Jack Butland was also busy and the pick of three vital saves from the England international was the excellent one-handed stop he made to keep out Olivier Giroud's header early in the second half. Otherwise Arsenal huffed and puffed but lacked that little bit of guile needed to break down Stoke.

Despite all the history and enmity surrounding this fixture, the game was a slowburner and never came to life during the opening 45 minutes and only flickered thereafter. Mesut Özil’s absence through injury left Arsenal without their creative spark and Stoke were not exactly setting things alight at the other end.

Everything felt a little flat and even the Stoke supporters seemed to be bored when they started asking Wenger for a wave that they were never going to get. Ibrahim Afellay thumped a 20-yard left-foot drive narrowly wide after Marko Arnautovic and Walters combined but that as was close as Stoke came to scoring before half-time.

Arsenal, with Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain thrust into a central role to fill Özil’s boots, played in fits and starts. Their best moment of the first half came on 21 minutes when Joel Campbell, coming in off the touchline, played a deft pass that released Giroud in the Stoke area. The striker opened up his body to try to sweep a left-footd shot into the far corner but Butland, to his credit, was quickly off his line and parried.

Stoke’s keeper also tipped over Oxlade-Chamberlain’s effort and made a fine save to deny Giroud for a second time two minutes after the restart. Giroud managed to get free in the area and met Ramsey’s corner with a powerful downward header that Butland, diving low to his right, superbly clawed away.

At least the game opened up a little and produced a bit more incident. Theo Walcott felt he should have had a penalty when he tumbled to the ground after Philipp Wollscheid had initially tugged at his arm but Craig Pawson, the referee, was unmoved.

Arsenal were playing with more belief but Stoke still had their moments, in particular on the counterattack and Cech had to make two saves in quick succession. The Arsenal goalkeeper did well to turn away Joselu’s low shot and then jumped to his feet to repel Bojan Krkic’s attempt to turn in the rebound. Cech later thwarted Joselu again, not wholly convincingly but effectively all the same, as he pawed a low shot behind before that late scramble that saw Ramsey clear.

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