Three days later, Stoke. Wednesday night. Wind, rain, the bet365 Stadium, and the particular Midlands brand of football that involved long throws, aerial duels, and the sincere belief that thirty-yard passes were an affectation.
This was Pato and Bojan's night.
I rested the spine Rodríguez, Benteke, Navas, Milivojević. The front four was Townsend on the right, Bojan in the ten, Gnabry on the left, and Pato up front. Neves and McArthur in midfield. The partnership that had dismantled Burnley, reunited against Bojan's former club.
The conditions were filthy. The rain drove sideways across the pitch, the wind swirling unpredictably, the ball skidding off the soaked surface like a stone skipping on water. The Stoke defenders who had been beaten 5-1 at Selhurst Park in August were playing with the desperate fury of men who remembered the humiliation and had been thinking about this fixture for three months.
