Mark Hughes: We must improve

Stoke City coach Mark Hughes has conceded his team need to improve following their 2-0 defeat to Swansea on Saturday.

The Potters find themselves down in 11th place in the Premier League table after a lacklustre display at the Liberty Stadium.

Swansea improved their chances of avoiding relegation and opened the scoring through striker Fernando Llorente.

His 10th-minute header could have been cancelled out by Stoke’s Mark Arnautovic but he missed a penalty.

Midfielder Tom Carroll then added a second Swans goal a minute after the spot-kick miss and Paul Clement’s men held on in the end.

Saturday’s defeat was Stoke’s fifth in six games and Hughes admits his team cannot keep producing below-par performances.

He told Sky Sports: “We made it difficult for ourselves, we didn’t start quick enough and allowed them to have a couple of corners, a few opportunities and we conceded from one of them.

“We looked careless in key moments and lack guile when quality was needed at crucial moments.

“In key areas of the field we lacked that, you’ve obviously got to be able to retain the ball in the opposition half and create chances.

“We had plenty of possession without really creating the chances we needed, a lot of our stuff petered out and we were finding ourselves going in the other direction.

“From our point of view we have to be better than that, we didn’t ask enough questions of Swansea in a game that was there for us to really sap their confidence if we started brightly. We needed to do better than we did.”