Mark Hughes spent most of this match in his seat, no doubt quite pleased with what he was seeing. Then, with Jose Izquierdo’s little prod on the hour for 2-2, it maybe felt a touch hot and up he got.
There can’t be a lot of comfort for the Welshman right now, when he will have been more acutely aware than normal of a Premier League manager’s mortality.
The sacking of Tony Pulis will have resonated, not so much on the grounds of shared nationality, nor because he is under obvious or immediate threat, but it did mean that four of the five clubs beneath Stoke have booted their bosses this season and football can be like an ugly game of dominoes sometimes.