Millwall scaled

Thank god for the return of the football season. OK, so it's one more vice to squeeze in between poker, freelance work, ebay sales, watching bad sci-fi and masterbating, but I like to keep busy. And I've already seen the same number of live games this season that I did in the whole of last season.

The pre-season friendly against Man City dropped on a weekend when I was home and it was an entertaining (if a little annoying) game. It was great to go one-nil up against such a poor Premiership side. When Sun Jihai was then sent off as the last defender and we got a penalty, it looked like being a good day to be a Stoke fan. But nothing is ever that simple when you support these boys. Despite some attrocious mistakes throughout the game that had nearly gifted us two goals, David James (England number one my arse) saved the penalty. To rub salt into the wound, the 10-man side then went on to beat us two-nil. 'Nads.

At least our performance gave me hope that this might be one of those years where we fly a little higher than our usual mid-table shiteness. That was soon knocked out of me by the single point from a possible six we picked up in the first two games. The opening day draw doesn't seem so bad when you consider we got the first red card of the season, but we missed another penalty that would have won us the game! I can even forgive the four-two loss away at Leicester, as once again we had a player sent off (number one for red cards!). It sounds like the manager really went for it, though, and that's the attitude we need.

With those poor results, today's game carried a heavy burden with it. Sitting in the same lowly spot as Millwall, the loser of today's game was likely to be in the relegation zone when 5pm rolled around. Maybe that's why the Millwall manager played a lone striker up front and packed the midfield and defence? Not exactly a popular decision with the home fans - I know because I was sitting in the middle of them! The Michael Chiklis lookalike sitting next to me made his thoughts known with just 10 minutes played: "Put anuvver facking striker on" he screamed intermittently, leaping to his feet every now and then and slamming his flip-up seat as hard as he could to emphasise the point. Eeeek!

Millwall never really got into the game - it's hard to win a match where your first shot on target comes in the 76th minute - and it took a single John Halls goal for Stoke to put some more points on the board. The fact that it sent Millwall to the bottom of the table at the same time was just a bonus.

It was a shame to have to watch the game in the opposition's end and not be able to celebrate the goal. Stoke run a ticket-only system for all away games now and I just never found five minutes during press week to phone up and order one. I was hoping the seat in the Millwall stand would at least be justified by my (work) mate Ricky's appearance, as he claims to be a Millwall supporter. Since he couldn't be arsed to turn up I can't confirm that. Still, the bragging rights are mine on Monday. Let the ribbing begin.