Lawrence: Stoke hero

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• Coventry City
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• Liam Lawrence

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Stoke manager Tony Pulis saluted Liam Lawrence as he defied medical advice to fire the Potters back to the top of the Championship.

Influential playmaker Lawrence was named on the bench for the 2-1 victory at Coventry, against the advice of the club's physio as he has been suffering from a sore groin.

The midfielder was brought on in the 66th minute and curled home the winning goal just 13 minutes later.

The hosts took the lead through Elliott Ward's 29th minute penalty and had chances to extend their lead before half-time.

But the game's second spot-kick saw Ricardo Fuller equalise for Stoke 10 minutes after the break before a dominant second-half display from the visitors culminated in Lawrence scoring the winner.

Fantastic

"Liam was fantastic when he came on," said Pulis. "I thought that if we could feed little balls into the spaces then we would cause them problems, and he did that brilliantly when he came on.

"He is a natural winger who wants to do things like that, but we couldn't start with him as he has had a very sore groin.

"Even the physio didn't want him on the bench but Liam is such an enthusiastic character, he wanted to be involved, so I put him on there.

"I wasn't sure whether we should take a chance with Liam because if his groin goes then that is us done and we have had it. But I just felt at the time that we could go on and win it.

"It was a great finish. He is a massive player for us and he is more than capable of doing that."

Panic

Chris Coleman accused his Coventry side of "choking" in the second half after his first home defeat in charge left the Sky Blues perilously close to the relegation zone.

"The only way I can describe it is that we choked in the second half," said Coleman.

"I told them at half-time we can't sit on the one-goal lead, but we stopped doing what we had been doing and the players started to wish their lives away - counting the clock down.

"You don't want to be seeing that with 40 minutes left at this stage of the season. If it was with five minutes to go then you can understand it.

"I think it is panic and the fear factor. But the positive is we are still not in the bottom three.

"There are three matches remaining to rescue the season and that is what we must do."