Stoke beat Sunderland 1-0 at the Britannia Stadium and climbed out of the relegation zone, much to the delight of boss Tony Pulis. He told Sky Sports: "I thought it was a great performance tonight - the disappointing thing was that we never took our chances, we had lots of chances, lots of opportunities.

"People will talk about Ric's goal and the long throw but there was other opportunities during the game that with a little bit of luck we could have taken."

Pulis thought his players were "very, very good tonight for the 90 minutes".

"We started really well and it was as well as we have played this year," he said, adding: "Tonight proved that they really, really want to do well and if they play to that tempo and that pace then we will cause people problems at our place and again the crowd were just absolutely fantastic.

"The clean sheet tonight is a real, real pleasing thing as well," he said.