Reaction from the bet365 Stadium as Stoke City hold on for important win over Queens Park Rangers

Steven Schumacher was prepared to take Stoke City back to basics on a night when he realised the result was all that mattered.

Schumacher has built his reputation as a young manager on a swashbuckling brand of winning football – but, for the first time in his career in the last few weeks he has lost four matches in a row. He knew he had to stop that momentum against relegation rivals Queens Park Rangers at the bet365 Stadium, where Stoke hadn’t won since October.

They got their noses ahead thanks to a goal from Wouter Burger on the stroke of half-time and then were prepared to defend and defend again in the second half, including eight minutes of added time at the end, to seal a vital victory.

“Sometimes you have to come to a realisation about actually what’s important at certain stages,” said Schumacher.

“When we came in we spoke about how we wanted to try to change the style of play to create more opportunities, we’ve done that. All the possession stats, the average passes that we’ve made, the chances created, all of that’s improved – but the results in the last few weeks haven’t been what we wanted. Tonight we almost went back to basics, changed our shape slightly, played a little bit more direct and were harder to beat. At this stage of the season and as a coach, you’ve got to recognise what’s important and winning was all that mattered today.”

Schumacher insists he will stick with his belief that, in the end, his ideal brand of football is the best way to win consistently – but for now it’s a case of needs must and Stoke needed to embrace the importance of defending.

He said: “I believe that playing attacking football wins you games. We’ll try to pass the ball better than we did tonight, we’ll try to find a red shirt in the second halves of games if we can, but it’s been a tough run we’ve been on. We’ve been playing ok but getting beat. We’ve gone back to basics a little bit and done the ugly parts of the game. Once you do that and have that desire to keep the ball out of the net, you just need one chance to win the game. That’s kind of what happened.

“I’m pleased for everyone. We won’t go away from our principles but we have to realise we have to do both sides of the game.”