Stoke City v Sunderland: Hughes hails Potters' spirit ahead of crunch bottom-of-the-table clash

Stoke return to action in tomorrow’s crunch clash with Sunderland as the bottom two sides in the Premier League meet at the Bet365 Stadium

The Potters drew against West Brom and away to Manchester United to take their points tally to three, one better than Sunderland, a fortnight ago.

“It would have been nice to carry on into a home game,” Hughes told stokecityfc.com.

“We’ve had to be a little bit patient and wait for the opportunity, but we’ll now get that at the weekend.

“The spirit around the group is great and everyone is really focused on what we need to do.

“Everyone has come back in good heart; I think that they’re glad to see each other again and now we can focus until game time to get the job done.

“We’re the home side and if we play as well as we’ve done in recent weeks then we should (win the game).

“I think we’ve seen good signs in recent weeks – we played really, really well at Old Trafford and deservedly got the point.

“Everybody can see we’ve been working hard and we’re trying to get that first win on the board.

“When we do I think that everybody believes that we’re going to go on from that point.

“It needs to happen at the weekend and I’m fully confident that we’ll be in good shape to look to make it happen.”