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Stoke boss Hughes proud of players after Arsenal shock

Stoke City boss Mark Hughes was proud of his players after their 3-2 win over Arsenal.

Stoke went into the game on the back of three straight defeats, the last two against Liverpool and Manchester United.

Hughes felt his side had deserved more so was delighted they managed to secure all three points against Arsenal.

He said: "We've been disappointed in recent weeks. That's why I was looking forward to this game because we weren't playing badly and we felt there were opportunities today to test Arsenal and that's what we did.

"We were encouraged by the early goal, obviously. You don't expect to score after 20 seconds.

"From that point onwards I thought our play was good, and it was an outstanding second goal by Bojan, who once again has put in a really impressive performance. Since he's come back into the side, he's arguably been our man of the match in every game.

"Three-nil at half-time doesn't happen very often, certainly not to me anyway, so I was delighted with that. But we had the scars of the West Ham game, where we raced to a 2-0 lead and let it slip, so we used that as a reminder at half-time.

"It should have been 4-0, I'm really disappointed with the decision of the referee to chalk off an outstanding individual goal by Bojan.

"By all accounts he's said Diouf was interfering with play. We had a similar situation when we conceded a second goal at Old Trafford, so there's inconsistency there.

"Those things are big decisions and need to be correctly called. That puts a spring in their step and all of a sudden we're looking at 3-2 and we're hanging on when the game should have been dead and buried.

"But we got ourselves together and for the most part saw it out quite comfortably."

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