Stoke City v West Brom: Hughes targets elusive back-to-back wins

Mark Hughes has challenged Stoke City to record back-to-back Premier League wins for the first time this season against West Brom on Sunday.

Stoke’s top-flight campaign has been punctuated with a number of impressive results, including wins over Manchester City, Tottenham, Arsenal and, most recently, Everton. 

However, Hughes’ men failed to claim maximum points from the next game after the first three of those aforementioned wins – much to the Welshman’s frustration.

Bojan Krkic’s first-half penalty was enough to see Stoke edge Everton at a sodden Goodison Park on Friday and Hughes wants his side to build momentum ahead of the new year.

“We’ve found it difficult to get back-to-back results. That’s something that has stalled our season,” said Hughes, who has injury doubts over Phil Bardsley (ankle) and Stephen Ireland (knee).

“We’ve had really good performances, I mean we’ve won here [at Everton], we’ve won at Man City and Tottenham but then stumbled in our next game.

“Hopefully, that won’t be the case. It’s difficult for everybody with the quick turnaround but we’ll make the best of it. 

“We pride ourselves on our fitness levels so hopefully they will sustain us and enable us to get through these next two games [against West Brom and Manchester United].”

While Stoke are looking upwards after a hard-fought victory on Merseyside, Alan Irvine will be eager for West Brom to stop the rot.

Irvine’s men, who have won only one of their last eight league games, will go in search of a first victory over Stoke in five attempts, although they are unbeaten on their last four visits to the Britannia Stadium.

Graham Dorrans scored a late winner in West Brom’s last triumph against Stoke and could return for Irvine following a calf problem, although Victor Anichebe (groin) remains doubtful. 

Irvine was left to rue individual errors during Friday’s 3-1 defeat to Manchester City but maintains he and his squad are doing all they can to turn results around.

“All I can do is keep on trying to do the job in the way I do,” he said.

“I’ll work extremely hard, I try leave nothing to chance. Unfortunately, I can’t actually do anything about individual errors. What I can do is try make sure the team plays in a certain way. 

“I can’t be in control of some of the things that have happened. The players have been great and all we can do is keep on working. 

“We caused [Man City] some problems going forward, we just gave ourselves a mountain to climb defensively.”