Mark Hughes Claims Stoke Deserved a Draw Despite West Brom Gifting Them Their Goal

Mark Hughes felt his side were good value for their first away point of the season against West Brom despite the fortunate circumstances of their goal.

He told Stoke City's official website: “We thoroughly deserved at least a point today and on another day, under different circumstances then we may have won the game.”

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The Stoke City manager felt the game lacked quality and suggested this is a regular occurrence against West Brom: “It wasn’t the greatest of games today to be perfectly honest, but we have all been involved in those sort of matches here, so we knew what to expect."

However, the Welshman took positives from his side's performance at the Hawthorns this season “It was a better performance than we produced here last year and obviously a better result too, so we have to take the positives from that.”

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The Potters' gaffer felt it was his side that demonstrated the most offensive intent out of the two clubs: “We were always the team that were trying to be more progressive and win the game, so we kept at it and fair play to the lads for doing that."

Mark Hughes also hailed the impact of Stoke substitutes Ramadan Sobhi and Peter Crouch: “We made a couple of changes that aided us. I thought Ramadan added a creative spark to our play, and enabled us to ask more questions of their backline, and obviously Crouch did what he has done for so many years at this level, which is cause problems and score goals.”

Hughes will be delighted with the way his side has responded to their opening day to defeat to Everton, with Stoke having gone on to secure four points in two games thanks to a stunning 1-0 over Arsenal and a hard-fought 1-1 draw with the Baggies.