Not As Tight As The Scoreline Would Suggest : Stoke City 1 QPR 0

In the event Stoke had all their frontline players available. Against a robust QPR team they had chances to enhance the scoreline, but in the end depended on Higginbottom's first half penalty conversion, after Fuller was impeded in the box.

Amongst other chances QPR goalkeeper Royce pulled off a magnificent first half save from a Hendrie shot, after some really swift and incisive build up play by Stoke. Only Pericard will know how he missed an open goal when set up by a Berger cut back in the last few minutes, however.

Stoke looked sharp in the first half playing some class football, if occasionally they did overelaborate their moves. In the second half the team was less ambitious, and QPR came more into things, but did not penetrate the excellent Stoke defence - which now has delivered 7 consecutive clean sheets - too often.

Andy Griffin completed his loan spell from Portsmouth with a masterly display on the left side of defence, which rightly earned him Man of the Match from the sponsors.Nothing is ever certain, but it looks quite likely that he will return to Stoke on a permanent basis in January.

An excellent result, plus 5th in the league table, not at all a bad day's work, in front of an appreciative crowd, on what was easily the coldest day at the Britannia so far this season.