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Mark Hughes is urging any disgruntled Stoke fans to try and keep things in perspective in the wake of Saturday’s injury-time loss at Crystal Palace.

Hughes, speaking ahead of Wednesday’s visit from Liverpool, insists his team are not playing badly and wants fans to try and take the emotion out of their assessments.

“When you lose a lead or an opportunity to win a game,” said Hughes, “sometimes your emotion can cloud your correct perception of the game.

“On the day, I know it was a good performance. Not our absolute best performance, but not our worst.

“But clearly the goal shapes everybody’s perception of how well or poorly we did on the day.

“Obviously we have to cut those goals out. I think if our performances were really poor and we were getting well beaten, you can sometimes address major issues in terms of performance of individuals, but that’s not the case in my view.

“For the most part, the performance on Saturday was good enough to get something out of the game.

“We are not going to be really devastated by that because we know we can turn those moments around. It’s fine margins at the moment.”

Asked specifically about the reaction of angry Stoke City fans to events at Selhurst Park on Saturday, Hughes continued: “There’s seems to have been a negativity from probably the beginning of the season and you only dissipate it by winning.

“And if you don’t win or you lose, it comes flooding back.

“You’ve got to take a considered view and take the emotion out of losing games and look at it as we look at it and ask what are we doing right and what are we doing wrong?

“And I don’t feel we are doing a lot wrong.”