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Mark Hughes says Stoke players need to 'step up'

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Stoke manager Mark Hughes says his players need to step up after two defeats and they have been getting back to basics ahead of the game against Watford

Stoke manager Mark Hughes says his players need to step up following two consecutive defeats.

After a promising start to the season they were beaten 7-2 at Manchester City and that was followed by a 2-1 defeat at home to Bournemouth last Saturday which has left them just above the bottom three on goal difference.

Speaking ahead of Saturday's trip to Watford, Hughes said: "You've just got to go out there (on the training pitch) and get back to fundamentals, understand what we did poorly, what we did wrong, and make sure we have a performance that's consistent, we've got the capacity to do that.

"We've a good group, we've got guys in there that are disappointed in their own personal performance but collectively we need to step up."

STOKE ON TRENT, ENGLAND - OCTOBER 21:  Junior Stanislas of AFC Bournemouth celebrates scoring the 2nd Bournemouth goal with Lys Mousset of AFC Bournemouth
Image: Junior Stanislas scored the winner for Bournemouth against Stoke last Saturday

By contrast Watford are in the top six although Hughes has noted that they were also heavily beaten by Manchester City 6-0 earlier in the season.

The Stoke boss added: "A difficult game for us against Watford. I have to say they are playing exceptionally well at the moment, they've had good results, they're in a good position in the league, but suffered at the hands of Manchester City like we did.

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"That's obviously the comparison you can make between ourselves that in terms of how they reacted to the disappointment was probably a little bit better than the way we reacted to a heavy defeat to Manchester City."

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