'Slumdogs' beat millionaires

Stoke City 1 Manchester City

For as long as it takes them to make something of the most bewildering spending power British football has known, Manchester City will have to run the gauntlet on afternoons such as this, when they look what they still are: a mid-table team.

"You don't get much for £75m these days" was the knee-jerk reaction to a display so wretched that a Stoke City side without a win in 11 games and without their most influential player for 59 minutes were utterly comfortable and deserving in victory.

Mark Hughes could certainly have chosen a better away day on which to have his chairman Khaldoon Khalifa Al Mubarak in attendance. As awful as City's League results on the road have generally been, performances can surely have been no worse from a team emerging as supposedly the best that dirhams can buy.

It is the cluelessness of his players to penetrate Stoke's defence that will most have shocked the manager, their task having apparently been rendered easier by Rory Delap's dismissal for an unseemly spat with Shaun Wright-Phillips that might have brought the England international a red card, too.

City's best move of the game, a terrific one-touch break down the right, was already behind them and they didn't trouble Thomas Sorensen once after Matthew Etherington had set up James Beattie for a fine headed winner on his home debut. Explain that to the money men on Planet Eastlands.

That the goal seconds before the interval was fashioned by Stoke's own two transfer-window purchases was just one more kick where it hurts as far as their visitors were concerned. "The team spirit is what the fans expect of us," Beattie said. "That's what we're all about, a good team, not a group of individuals."

Whether or not the striker was having a dig, the same drive was woefully lacking in City's play, Craig Bellamy apart. Robinho was fitful against opponents he took a hat-trick off in October, Wayne Bridge was poor and Nigel de Jong's protective duties were redundant during the second half.

Only five clubs have accrued more Premier League home points than Stoke this season and there will be several more wins on offer for them during the survival run-in if more sides continue to leave their teeth at home.

City had no-one to hold a candle to Ryan Shawcross who combined resilience with posing a scoring threat to Shay Given's rival-to-be Joe Hart.

"I always felt when it was 11 v 11 that we were in the ascendancy," said Hughes. "But, as soon as the sending-off occurred, the game changed and we weren't able to break them down in the second half."

Goal: Beattie (45) 1-0

Stoke City (4-4-2): Sorensen; Wilkinson, Abdoulaye Faye, Shawcross, Pugh; Delap, Whelan, Amdy Faye (Griffin, 78), Etherington (Sonko, 86); Fuller (Cresswell, HT), Beattie. Substitutes not used: Simonsen (gk), Olofinjana, Lawrence, Kitson.

Manchester City (4-1-2-3): Hart; Richards, Kompany, Onuoha, Bridge; De Jong (Caicedo, 72); Zabaleta (Elano, 55), Ireland; Wright-Phillips, Bellamy, Robinho. Substitutes not used: Schmeichel (gk), Fernandes, Garrido, Jo, Vassell.

Referee: M Atkinson (W Yorkshire).

Booked: Stoke Wilkinson; Man City Elano.

Sent-off: Stoke Delap.

Man of the match: Shawcross.

Attendance: 27,236.