Mark Hughes Proud of 'Excellent' Stoke After 2-2 Draw With Man Utd

Having just helped guide Stoke to an impressive point against top of the table Manchester United, Jose Mourinho refused to shake Mark Hughes' hand. The Stoke City boss has had previous drama with handshakes, when Tony Pulis also refused to shake his' hand in a 1-0 loss to West Brom.

Commenting on why Mourinho may have snubbed him, Hughes said: "I pushed him because he was in my technical area. Maybe that's why he didn't want to shake my hand. Maybe it's because it has to be viewed as a negative result for him, coming to Stoke when everybody expected them to beat us."

With this incident stealing the headlines, it clouds over an impressive performance by Stoke, who were resilient defensively and clinical in front of goal. Something that Mark Hughes was keen to reiterate when talking to Stoke City+.

“I thought we were excellent, defensively we were very good and for the most part managed to restrict them. That aside, we were rock solid and were always a threat going the other way too - we could have scored any number of goals to be honest."

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Hughes also praised Erik Maxim Choupo-Moting, who scored a brace on the day - earning Stoke City a precious point: “Scoring two goals against Manchester United will undoubtedly help him - he is in a great place at the moment, and rightly so, he is making a real contribution.”

The Cameroonian was a doubt before the match, having sustained hamstring damage but was raring to go and refused to be benched - despite the medical team suggesting he be. “For the most part you will always find a little bit of damage in footballers scans" said Hughes, "but we took him by his word, he said he was ready to go and he proved that he was - he was exceptional.”

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To cap it all off, Hughes insisted this was Stoke's best performance of the season thus far, he added: “In terms of the performance I would argue that even though we beat Arsenal here last time out, this was a better performance, albeit we haven’t won the game.”