Stoke midfielder Whelan shrugs off stray Nzonzi elbow

Stoke City midfielder Glen Whelan shrugged off the elbow he copped from Blackburn Rovers' Steven Nzonzi during Saturday's win.

Whelan needed lengthy treatment for the injury, while Nzonzi didn’t even receive a yellow card from referee Mark Halsey for what looked like a clear use of the elbow.

Whelan shrugged it off and had his revenge with his second-half goal after Rory Delap’s first-half opener before Peter Crouch bagged Stoke’s third.

Said Whelan: “It’s just a little scratch on the nose. It keeps weeping, but it’s okay. It was one of those things.

“The most important thing was that we won. It was more about the result than the performance and it was vital to get the three points because of the run we had been on.

“If you take the last four or five games out we had been doing well this season, but we knew we had slipped up recently and our confidence got knocked about a bit. Hopefully it’s back now.”