But their hopes suffered a major blow when Joe Allen was red-carded for a late lunging tackle on Josh Brownhill after only 12 minutes.

The Potters continued to keep up the pressure and could have doubled their lead when Daniel Bentley did well to keep out James McClean on 21 minutes.

Antoine Semenyo blazed over from a tight angle on 42 minutes, before Clucas failed to keep a long-range effort down on the stroke of half-time.

The visitors levelled when Famara Diedhiou headed home from the goal-line after a brilliant cross by Jack Hunt on 55 minutes.

The comeback was complete when Tom Edwards turned into his own net on 62 minutes after another superb cross from Hunt.

"The board sees the work I do every day, they are good football people but I don't know how long they can be patient," Jones said.

"I want to change things but nothing is going for us, There are teams with far more points than us, but are playing worse than us.

"We cant keep saying that because eventually people's patience runs out.

"The fans and the club have been brilliant with the patience they have given me and I have to repay that.

"We came out of the blocks really well, we wanted to attack, to take the shackles off and play without fear.

"I'm really proud of the work-rate of the players. If we just defended better, it has cost us, we do not defend well.

"Joe Allen is not a clear-cut red card. It is not an obvious error by the ref, it is 50/50 and we are on the wrong end of those decisions.

"We have created some clear-cut chances after going down to 10 men. We were on the front foot and could have doubled our lead.

"The red card made 100 per cent difference in the outcome."

Bristol City boss Lee Johnson admitted his side had been lucky to get the win.

"Stoke were excellent today from start to finish, they worked hard and showed a great attitude," he said.

"We got away with one, this is a tough division and we will take it.

"Our first-half performance didn't warrant a win, the second half performance warranted winning the half, but Stoke didn't deserve to lose.

"I haven't had a chance to look at the red card challenge.

"The ref has made a call, I didn't think it was that high but it could have been a nasty one.

"They were the better side before that by a country mile so it was a key incident. We needed something like that to get a foothold on the game.

"They were getting in behind us far too easily and we didn't start well enough. We had to stoke the fire in the second half and impose our numerical advantage."

Johnson did offer words of comfort for his counterpart, though.

"I know it's not going well right now, but Stoke have a really good manager," he said.