Stoke City manager Michael O’Neill: “Peterborough looked like a good team with nice technical players. They played well and made it hard for us.”

An early goal for Mario Vrancic and a very late strike from substitute Tyrese Campbell sealed a 2-0 win for the Potter and pushed them up to fourth in the Championship table. Campbell struck deep into injury time after Stoke substitute Sam Surridge had been sent off for violent conduct in the 90th minute.

But Posh played well for much of the match, a fact acknowledged by O’Neill after the match.

“We defended the box well when we had to,” O’Neill said. “They’ve got some nice technical players. Siriki

Dembele is a handful. He comes deep and gets on the ball and you have to deal with that.

“I didn’t think we played particularly well. I thought we just looked a little bit leggy at times and they played well. They looked like a good team and moved the ball quite well.

“They didn’t cause us that many problems particularly in the first half. They had one or two more in the second half.

“But we’ve now kept three clean sheets in a row which is brilliant. We’ve had quite a bit of disruption in our back three. For a while it was picking itself with the goalkeeper but now with injuries the boys deserve a lot of credit for the way they defended today and keeping a clean sheet.

“We probably should have scored just after half time which would have made things easier for us. Jacob has a chance when he goes around the goalkeeper and from a set piece the goalkeeper makes two fantastic saves.

“Then when you’re down to 10 men you’re always vulnerable. It was good to get the second goal when we did. They made us work hard for it. through.”