Wenger's decision to start his captain on the bench almost backfired as they had only Gervinho's strike to show for their dominance in the first half.

To add to their problems, former Tottenham striker Peter Crouch had marked his return to north London with an equaliser 10 minutes before the interval.

But with the Gunners labouring after half-time, Van Persie was finally let loose with 25 minutes remaining.

And within a quarter of an hour he had scored twice to bail out his shot-shy team-mates and take his goal tally to 29 in his last 34 appearances for the club.

Wenger then revealed the in-form frontman was nearly not involved at all, only passing a fitness test in the morning before the game.

The Gunners manager said: "The second half was basically all us, especially after the first 15 minutes, and then the problem was to score goals and Van Persie can do that better than many people, and he did it when he came on.

"He had muscular tightness, I was not even sure he would be on the team sheet but we checked him this morning and he was medically all right to be on the bench.

"Before you leave him out you think always 15 times 'do I really do it' but I felt at some stage, and looking at the number of games he has played and with his history, you have to be cautious.

"He played two full games with Holland and the whole game against Sunderland, he played up front alone in Marseille, so at some stage you have to give them a breather, but up front it's difficult.

"Of course Robin, with his two goals, deserves massive credit but I think Gervinho had a very lively and influential game as well."

Ivory Coast striker Gervinho, partnering Marouane Chamakh in attack, got the ball rolling with a fine goal after 27 minutes.

Aaron Ramsey was the architect, collecting a half-clearance from Ryan Shawcross - the man whose tackle broke his leg 18 months ago - and chipping it back into the area for Gervinho to control on his chest and lash home.

But Stoke grabbed a shock leveller seven minutes later from a disputed free-kick after Laurent Koscielny was adjudged to have fouled Crouch.

As Wenger protested to fourth official Jon Moss, Glenn Whelan lofted the ball into the area, Shawcross' cross found its way to Jon Walters at the far post and his header back across goal was nodded in by Crouch.

After a sluggish start to the second half the inevitable change was made, Van Persie making his entrance in place of Chamakh.

And it took only eight minutes for the Dutchman to get Arsenal back on track.

Gervinho beat Walters to reach the byline and pulled the ball back for his strike partner, who squeezed his shot between Asmir Begovic and his near post.

And Van Persie had the final say with six minutes to go, Gervinho again the provider with a low cross which the in-form striker dispatched past Begovic to kill Stoke off.

The Gunners have now won six of their last seven matches, not bad for a club in so-called crisis not too long ago.

And Manchester City's 6-1 mauling of rivals United rekindled memories of Arsenal's own horror show at Old Trafford earlier this season.

"That was a surprise. But France nearly beat New Zealand in the rugby today and that was a surprise as well," added Wenger.

"Like when we lost 8-2, the big scores have no special meaning, it only means something special happened in the game.

"It's not that you lost three points, what is more difficult to deal with is the emotional aspect of a result like that remains in your head."

For Stoke, it meant a third defeat of the season, all of which have come after a Europa League outing on the previous Thursday.

"Van Persie has come on and changed the game," said manager Tony Pulis.

"We looked comfortable until he came on, I don't think Asmir had had a shot to save up until then.

"The lads worked hard. We've lost three games this season all on the back of Europa games, but if you look at our running stats they aren't far off when we've been winning games."