Baffled Bruce curses his luck again

Hull City 1 Stoke City 1

Bruce was unhappy about a penalty decision in last week’s 1-0 win at QPR and was again left frustrated with the officials after the Potters snatched a draw against 10-man Hull. Their goal, bundled in by Ryan Shawcross, came seconds after referee Jonathan Moss had given Stoke the throw, despite an apparent deflection off one of their players.

Nikica Jelavic’s poacher’s finish had put Bruce’s men on the cusp of a second successive league win for the first time in almost a year despite James Chester’s 14th-minute sending off.

The Hull centre-back received his marching orders after taking down Glenn Whelan with the Irishman bearing down on goal.

But instead of celebrating three points, the Tigers boss was left exasperated.

“We feel an injustice because you can see how blatant it is,” he said. “Their player ran away and didn’t want to even take the throw-in. Surely that’s an indication to the referee or the officials to say, ‘Hang on a minute, it must have hit him’. It wasn’t even a slight deflection either. Everyone in the ground must have seen it except for the officials.

“I expect three officials to get something as blatant as that throw-in right... they’re only 30 yards away and I saw it. They said to me I was only guessing but when you see it it’s ridiculous.”

Bruce tried his best to stay on the right side of tactful, wary of attracting disciplinary action, but was aggrieved enough after his side’s hard-working effort to make his point.

“I got into trouble twice last year so I’ve vowed I’m not going to give the FA any more money,” he added. But we’ve had two shocking decisions in two weeks. Last week it was an awful penalty in the last 10 minutes but it didn’t count [against us], it was saved.

“Given the circumstances you would accept a point because we were down to 10 men in 15 minutes. But it’s difficult to take and it’s difficult for the players because the determination was manful to say the least.”

Potters boss Mark Hughes, who saw his side beaten by Aston Villa last week, was disappointed with the way Stoke went about their business but is pleased to have registered a first point of the campaign.

“Given the situation we found ourselves in we didn’t take the best from that situation,” he said.

“We found ourselves up against a team with 10 men and first and foremost you don’t concede a goal. So we found ourselves in a situation entirely of our own making. We needed to show a little quality and guile and use our intelligence to understand what was required.

“We didn’t do that to a great extent in the second half.

“In the end we’ve taken an away point and that’s something we haven’t done too many times on our travels so to get a point in our first away game, I would suggest, is a good sign.

“But we’re an honest group and we know we can do better than that.”

HULL: McGregor, Davies, Chester, McShane, Elmohamady, Livermore, Huddlestone, Quinn (Meyler 76), Robertson, Ince (Rosenior 56),

Jelavic (Boyd 81).

STOKE: Begovic, Bardsley, Shawcross, Wilson, Pieters, Sidwell (Adam 65),Whelan (Bojan 41), Odemwingie, Nzonzi, Arnautovic (Crouch 55), Diouf.

Ref: Jon Moss (W Yorkshire).