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London - Stoke boss Mark Hughes concedes that individual errors cost
his side the game at Anfield after going down 4-1 to Liverpool on Tuesday.
The hosts struggled with the tactics employed by Hughes for
much of the first half, which saw him play Peter Crouch and Jonathan Walters up
front.
The move worked initially as the Potters took a 12th-minute
lead when Walters headed home a cross from Erik Pieters, who then saw Ragnar
Klavan clear his goal-bound effort after Simon Mignolet had saved Joe Allen's
shot just seconds before.
But Hughes lamented the mistakes from Glen Johnson,
Giannelli Imbula and Ryan Shawcross which resulted in three of the four goals
scored by the Reds on the night.
"We caused them problems," the Welshman admitted
after the match. "Obviously with Liverpool they want to pressure, they
want you to make mistakes in your half, they want to nick balls off you, so the
game plan today(Tuesday) was to take the press out of the game.
"It's quite simple, you just stop them having the
ability to pressure and you take it out and cause them issues at the other end
- and we did.
"I don't think too many teams come here and play two up
top. They didn't deal with it particularly well, in my view - certainly not in
the first half.
"They've been fortunate really because of individual
errors, we handed them the game. I'm sure a lot of other teams will look at
what we did today and maybe try and replicate it.
"They still won the game 4-1, so I'm not going to take too much credit for what we were trying to do."
