Despite their home defeat to Tottenham, Stoke City boss Tony Pulis says he's been delighted with his team's form.

Pulis insisted that after coming through a tough run of matches in recent weeks, his players were in a positive mood ahead of Saturday's trip to West Ham.

"It's been a real top performance again," he said.

"In the second half, especially with 10 men against a team that has got so much quality, for us to work the way we worked...and really, we had two great opportunities to score a second goal, Ric (Fuller) to put us in front and then Mama (Sidibe) right at the end.

"There were opportunities for us and the spirit of the team has been fantastic.

He continued: "When you are in the Premier League, you can get a run of games that are very difficult, and if you look at it, we've played Chelsea, Arsenal, Man City twice, Tottenham and Aston Villa.

"That is most of the teams, apart from Manchester United, in the top six of the table and in three of those games, we had 10 men on the pitch.

"So you can pick games where you are going to get bad runs because of the opposition."