Were very glad to entice all our innocent victims under the premise of the watching a Football Match at the Britanic Stadium but you as well as I know that Football is the last thing you'll see here.  

Before the match we'll quite gladly arrange a welcoming committee for you at the 'Bridge of Sighs' where you can test the laws of gravity. Cakes will be on hand, rock cakes that is and drinks or at least water can be provided by a quick dunk in the Canal . 

If you do manage to progress any further then we're sure you'll be amazed at just what a magnificent Stadium we have here. Sunderland may have a 40,000 all seater and totally enclosed Stadium which is protected from the elements of the North Sea just a few miles away BUT they paid a massive £15 million for their paltry ground whilst we stole the bargain of the century, the largest 'open air freezer' in the world for a mere £14.7 million. Someone really saw those Geordie boys a comin' didn't they. 

Well, that's enough of my biased ramblings. If you don't beleive me then read this totally independant reveiw of our magnificent new stadium. 

Stoke has always had an identity crisis - six small towns cobbled together into 
one sprawling city that lacks an identity. 

Now their once great football club is the same. Soulless, shapeless, rudderless and heading towards oblivion. 

The core of the problem is the multi-million development which has replaced 
the Victoria Ground. The Britannia Stadium looks easily accessible from the city but a guided tour of the Potteries is needed to get there by car. 

Visitors are lulled into a false sense of enthusiasm when they pass through suburban Trentham - but as soon as they drive along the inappropriately named Sir Stanley Matthews Way the reality becomes horribly clear. 

The landscape is typical of Stoke, bleak and soul-destroying , there is nothing there at all. No trees, no bushes no flowers and little grass. 

The awful truth is that the club have built their new home on a tip that resembles a nuclear wasteland . And fans who do not fancy driving miles to get there 
face a long walk or are bussed in like prisoners being transported to a Soviet gulag. 

Once inside the nightmare continues. It is clean enough but the shape of the ground is all wrong. It’s not a patch on Sunderland’s superb Stadium of  Light - yet they cost roughly the same - and it does not come up to scratch when compared with Bolton’s Reebok Stadium. 

Bolton also moved to a site out of town, but a mini-shopping complex has 
sprung up next to their new home containing sports stores, fast food outlets, a cinema and a pub. 

That gives the place an immediate feeling of community whereas Stoke have developed a futuristic prison . 

Middlesbrough and Derby could also be accused of building their new homes on barren land, but once inside both grounds that is soon forgotten as the magnificence and splendour of the stadium sweeps all other thoughts out of the mind. 

At Stoke it must be all too easy for home fans to gaze out past a corner flag and wistfully look at the remnants of the old Victoria Ground in the distance. 

Perhaps that is why the city faithful did not get behind their team until Kyle Lightbourne gave them an injury-time winner. They lacked the fervour of Pompey’s majestic travelling support, who backed their team with full-throated passion from the start. 

But perhaps it is because they feel conditioned by their surroundings. Stoke is England’s equivalent to the land that time forgot. 

They do not know whether they are from the Midlands or from the north and where winkle-picker shoes are still in fashion. 

The Britannia Stadium is also neither fish nor fowl and should serve as a 
warning to Pompey - if they ever move home - as how the future can go so horribly wrong.