Mark Hughes and Stoke City have enjoyed a fine start of the year 2015 after claiming triumphs over Leicester City and Queens Park Rangers as well as forcing a draw with Manchester United and Newcastle United.
These positive results have even turned Mark Hughes into one of the nominees for managers of the month award of January of 2015. Mauricio Pochettino, Mark Hughes, Brendan Rodgers and Ronald Koeman are the other nominees.
Nonetheless, not everything has been going perfectly for Mark Hughes or his squad as they recently experienced a 4-1 loss after locking horns with Manchester City in a Premier League match.
Sergio Aguero opened up the scoreboard for Manchester City at the 33rd minute but only a few moments later and Peter Crouch made his mark on the scoreboard as he tied the match 1-1. The first half reached it’s end with a scoreboard of 1-1.
When the 2nd part of the match kicked off both teams attempted to take the lead and it was a very tight battle as possession of the ball was being contested between each side with no squad having a clear advantage but the main difference was that the players of Manuel Pellegrini managed to make the most out of their goal-scoring chances and goals from James Milner, Sergio Aguero and Nasri sealed the game for Manchester City.
Even with this recent setback, Mark Hughes was pretty happy on how his team performed against one of the top clubs in the Premier League.
“We started off really brightly, played some superb football and really should have been awarded a penalty for handball early on. In these games, against the big sides, you need those decisions to go for you. Unfortunately tonight it didn’t.
“Even despite that I was really happy with what we were producing; we were good value going in at half time all square, and to be perfectly honest, if anything we should have been in front.” Stoke City’s Mark Hughes said after the match was over.