Stoke City boss Mark Hughes admits an FA Cup defeat at Crystal Palace capped a "tough" week for the club.

Stoke's loss came five days after they lost their Capital One Cup semi-final with Liverpool on penalties. With them having played over 120 minutes Hughes made eight changes to his team, who responded with a flat performance, and he said: "It's been a hard week to take.

"You don't want to go out of two competitions. We wanted to progress and this (defeat) was a consequence of (Tuesday's).

"We were a little bit stretched, we had a number of players unavailable.

"We didn't have enough in the final third when we had good opportunities.

"We're disappointed because it's a competition we wanted to do well in.

"We can have a good run at the European places (via the Premier League), we're very much in the mix. We can focus on what we have left. We want to try and build on the past two seasons, which is two ninth-placed finishes. We want to go better than that."