Hughes: Stoke made too many mistakes against Liverpool

Mark Hughes feels Stoke City handed Liverpool the win in their Premier League clash at Anfield by making too many mistakes.

Jonathan Walters gave Stoke an early lead when he headed home Erik Pieters' cross, but poor defending from Glen Johnson allowed Adam Lallana to level the scoring, before Roberto Firmino made it 2-1 in the closing stages of the first half.

An own goal from Giannelli Imbula and a strike from Daniel Sturridge after Ryan Shawcross' poor backpass then saw Liverpool cruise to a 4-1 win after the break, much to the frustration of Hughes.

"We are disappointed with the result clearly because nobody wants to lose a game by a big margin, which I suppose people will view it as," the Stoke boss said at a news conference.

"I think when you take the game as a whole then I think we were very much on the front foot, especially during the first period. We were 1-0 to the good, the better team in my opinion but then we made mistakes defensively at the end of the half.

"To go in at the break 2-1 down when we had put in so much effort and showed a great understanding of what we wanted to do was difficult to take. We wasted all of our good work in fairness by gifting them a couple of goals due to lapses in concentration and wrong decisions, something which continued in the second half unfortunately.

"The two goals in the second half, which should have been avoided, clearly took the game away from us."