Justice Done for City As Late Strike Seals Win ; Barclays Premier League

Summary

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STOKE are back in business after surviving a mini goal-blitz at a breathless Britannia last night to end their miserable five-match losing sequence. Stoke blew a 2-0 lead and looked ripe for a dramatic beating, but bounced back off the ropes to land the killer blow via Dean Whitehead's close-range finish on 85 minutes.

Ricardo Fuller seemed to have settled what was a largely one- sided contest for much of the evening with a brilliant second for 2- 0 in the 71st minute - hs is 100th goal in British football - only for Birmingham to strike twice in the next five minutes to open up the grisly prospect of Stoke's sixth successive defeat for the first time since 2002.

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Extract

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Justice Done for City As Late Strike Seals Win ; Barclays Premier League

But justice, a concept alien to Stoke in recent times, was done with Whitehead's late strike.

And three goals in one match against Birmingham was some going after previously enduring 13 years and a total of 746 minutes of football since Stoke last bloodied the Blue noses by scoring against them.

With all eyes on the performance of referee Mark Clattenburg, last night's clash was barely 10 minutes old by the time he was confronted with his first big call.

And it almost goes without saying that his verdict was not exactly to Stoke's satisfaction.

A loose ball in the Birmingham box left Danny Higginbotham and Ben Foster converging on an incident which left the former Stoke keeper clatter...

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