Publications
Partners
Cape Town - Stoke City manager Mark Hughes wheeled out the excuses after Tuesday’s 1-0 Premier League defeat to Burnley at Turf Moor.
Ashley Barnes struck for the Clarets in the 89th minute to make it four defeats in their last five matches for the Potters.
"Clearly it wasn't the result we wanted and it wasn't the result we deserved in all honesty," Hughes told Sky Sports.
"We restricted them to very few opportunities, I think their goal was the one clear shot we let them have the whole game. I thought our guys were magnificent in terms of standing up to the challenge.
"You know what you face here. It's not going to be clever football, it's not going to test you with clever movements and patterns, it's just challenging for long balls and you've got to be up for that.
"Unfortunately, we lost Kurt Zouma and I think that obviously that diminished our ability to compete for the balls in the air.
"In the end, they've got a little bit of fortunate, it seems to be shining on them at the moment, and that's all they need.
"The lad (Barnes) put a good strike on it and that's won the game for them but please don't tell me that anyone thinks they deserved to win that because they didn't.
"[The players are] devastated because, as I said to them afterwards, they didn't deserve that and they deserved to get something out of a game that they worked so hard in.
"We'll be OK, we're fine, we've got a group of players that are trying to turn this around. We've had a couple of difficult away games which have tested us but I'm encouraged by what I saw tonight and at the weekend, we'll go again.
"We've got two good home games coming up and it's our intention to win them."
