Hughes laments two 'stolen' points

Stoke City were robbed of two points by Salomon Rondon's late equaliser in Saturday's 1-1 draw with West Brom, according to Mark Hughes.

Rondon headed home in stoppage time to secure a point for the Baggies in Tony Pulis' 1000th game as a manager, but Hughes insisted the result did no justice to his side's performance.

Stoke are now without a win in their first six Premier League games of the season, and find themselves second from bottom with just two points.

 "We're a bit upset. Clearly, we fully deserved to win the game," Hughes told Stoke City Player.

"We had to dig in towards the end when they started putting balls into the box but for the most part I felt we were quite comfortable in the game. We fully deserved to be in the lead. I thought we were going to see it out. I thought the efforts of the day deserved the three points.

"As it is, they've stolen two points off us really."

Stoke took the lead in the second half when Xherdan Shaqiri's cross was headed down to Joe Allen, whose finish gave the home supporters hope of seeing a first league victory in 2016-17.

But they could not complete the job and were forced to settle for a point at the bet365 Stadium.

Despite his side's failure to hold on for all three points, Hughes had praise for Allen and Shaqiri, saying: "I was pleased with the performance. It was difficult to play how we wanted to play. Clearly, West Brom play in a certain way and it's difficult to get a ball down and to pass and move in windy conditions.

"We had to match them and I thought we did. We were prepared to go toe-to-toe, to challenge and fight and do all of the ugly parts of the game that you need to do.

"It was a great goal by Joe and good influence from Shaq, who I thought did really well – he's only had a week's training with the group. I maybe expected him to maybe fade before the end but he didn't, he kept going.

"That will help us – we're getting good players back now and we'll be stronger for it."

He added: "The fans helped us today. They were magnificent right from the off, totally behind the team. The team senses that, and that's going to be important while we're getting over this little blip, which won't last long if we play like we did today and get the support that we had today."