Ayoze Pérez scored the goal that piled the pressure on the Stoke manager and prompted loud calls from some of their supporters for the Welshman to be sacked. By in effect sacrificing that game against Chelsea, which Stoke lost 5-0, Hughes put himself under the spotlight and left himself open to the criticism that followed at the end of this defeat. Three minutes later Newcastle took the lead with a goal that could not have been more simple. As the Newcastle fans enjoyed some fun at Hughes’s expense by chanting that the Stoke manager would be “sacked in the morning”, the home team poured forward in search of an equaliser. “We would have taken what we have got if we had been offered it before Christmas,” Benítez said.

Source: The Guardian January 01, 2018 17:07 UTC