Saturday 3 December 2016 23:49, UK
Mark Hughes says he was delighted as Stoke extended their purple patch with a 2-0 win over Burnley on Saturday evening.
The Stoke boss has overseen unprecedented success so far this season, with his side having lost just one game since being dealt a 4-1 thumping by Crystal Palace on September 18 and dropping just seven points in their last eight games.
Superb goals from Jon Walters and Marc Muniesa earned the Potters another victory and a further three points against an impotent Burnley side, and lifted them to ninth in the Premier League standings.
And Hughes was in good spirits about not only the victory, but about the quality of the squad he has assembled at the Bet365 Stadium.
"We're delighted" he said. "We're picking up good results, with good performances as well. I think from our point of view, the most pleasing part is that we are showing all aspects and characteristics of a really good team at this level.
"In the first half, some of our play was of a really, really high standard and we scored two outstanding goals as well - two-nil to the good, we were good value for that."
Burnley began both halves in a confident manner, but were unable to sustain the pressure required to break down the resolute Stoke defence, and Hughes was pleased with the way in which his players dealt with that.
"Second half Burnley clearly wanted to get back into the game, they went very direct, got all of the big guys on with the stature in terms of height, but we've got a lot of guys who have got stature in terms of wanting to get a positive result."
The second half was completely different from our point of view, we had to withstand a challenge, but I was delighted with what we produced."
Understandably, Hughes was also happy for goalscorer Marc Muniesa, but said there was little evidence to quell fears of a serious injury to Bruno Martins Indi, after he was struck by the elbow of Ashley Barnes.
He added: "I saw Bruno go down and he's got a big bang on his cheek. It might be a case that it's a crack in the cheekbone but it's a bit too swollen to get a definitive answer. We hope that's not the case because he played exceptionally well. Hopefully it wasn't premeditated.
"We wanted to encourage him [Muniesa]. Obviously we've got good footballers either side of Bruno in that back-three. Marc saw the opening and just carried on his run; it was a great strike and I'm delighted for him.
"It's a really big three points for us. I think that's four wins in six games for us and we are in the top half where we feel we want to be."
