Stoke City manager Mark Hughes believes his side were hampered by the sending off of captain Ryan Shawcross in their 2-0 defeat to Sunderland at the Stadium of Light.
Shawcross was dismissed for a second bookable offence in the second half and while Hughes questioned the decision, he admitted that his team did not perform to their potential when they had 11 men on the field.
The Welshman told the BBC: "It is obviously a key moment in the game and it significantly hampered our ability to win the game today.
"I spoke to Ryan [Shawcross], he feels he got a touch or a nick on the ball before beforehand, the lad maybe has gone down a little bit easy on it but the referee needs to be in a good position and the linesman needs to help him.
"At that point, we have to just get yourselves organised and make sure you are hard to beat and in fairness, I do not think they created anything of note to be perfectly honest when we went down to ten men.
"We were not quite at it, certainly in the first half I thought we could have made more use of the opportunities that we had, we did not move the ball quick enough in my view."
Stoke drop to 12th in the Premier League table with the loss.
Nathan Staples
