Stoke City: Hughes demands more

MARK Hughes is demanding an improvement from his Manchester City all stars after seeing his players fail recently where Stoke have succeeded.

While Stoke eventually made their numerical advantage count in beating Tottenham 2-1 last Sunday, Hughes helplessly watched his players blow their own victory hopes in a 2-2 draw at 10-man Newcastle the following day.

"I expect more," Hughes growled, "and I will be demanding more when we play Stoke at the weekend.

"We have to use the width of the pitch better and more craft and guile.

"We didn't move them around enough and, although they had two banks of four and were organised, I expect more from my team."

Hughes can expect two banks of four again on Sunday as Stoke are sure to set out their stall to try to repeat last month's goalless stalemate at Liverpool.

But the Man City boss sounds reasonably happy with the attacking threat of a team headlined nowadays by the likes of Brazilian trio Robinho, Jo and Elano, while the return of Shaun Wright-Phillips, from Chelsea, has done no harm to the pace and purpose behind their momentum going forward.

"We look like we've got goals in us at the moment and I don't think anybody else has scored as many as us in the Premier League," said Hughes.

"Now obviously we need to stop them going in at the other end, so we haven't quite got the balance yet.

"But we're looking good in an attacking sense and that's reassuring because the fact that we are a threat against even the top teams, that augurs well for the rest of the season."

Man City are now embarking on a favourable sequence of fixtures – at least on paper – and Hughes is anticipating a boost in results after gathering a solitary point from their last three outings against Newcastle, Liverpool and Wigan.

"We've looked at this period when we got the fixtures as an opportunity to pick up points," he revealed, "so we have to make sure that we do that.

"During the opening period we've played the vast majority of our games against sides from the top half.

"The likes of Chelsea and Liverpool have been in the first six or seven games and now we're coming into a period where the teams we're going up against are mid-table to the lower end of the table – so we expect to pick up points.

"We're looking to get some positive back-to-back results and I think at this time of the year if you get two wins on the belt then you can shoot up the table very quickly.

"So we want to do that... and continue with the quality of the football we're producing."