Mark Hughes praised Stoke’s resilience as they overcame yet another injury setback to beat Everton 2-0 to move up to eighth in the Premier League.
The Potters were forced to reshuffle their back four after loanee Philipp Wollscheid was forced off inside 15 minutes, but Victor Moses and Mame Biram Diouf struck to claim the points.
Stoke have now won three successive Premier League games for the first time this season, and Hughes praised his side’s adaptability.
“We had to rejig the back four once again which has been the story of our season,” Hughes told Sky Sports.
“But once again the group of players didn’t allow that to affect them. We’ve done that time and time again this year we’ve just picked ourselves up when things have gone astray.
“We’ve done tremendously and on the night, we just kept at it. Everton had a little bit if possession but they never created anything of real note.
“We defended really well and Victor Moses scored a fantastic header. Then we were in a position to soak up pressure and hit them on the break.
“We made a couple of changes which allowed us to hit on the counter and in the end we got the second as a result of that so all in all it’s a fantastic period that we are in at the moment.”
Despite moving up to heady heights of eighth in the table, Hughes refused to get carried away with the club’ current league position.
“We are eighth in the league, where we haven’t been too many times in the past so were pleased,” he added.
“We’ve still got a lot of work to do.”