Stoke lose the argument as Adam penalty is saved

THE road to relegation is paved with ‘what if’ moments and it was hard to escape the thought yesterday that Stoke had just suffered one.

Awarded a soft last-minute penalty, they could have calmly accepted the gift from referee Robert Madley and clambered out of the bottom three.

Instead, four of Paul Lambert’s players appeared to argue over who would take it, and when the squabbling stopped Charlie Adam had his effort beaten away by Brighton goalkeeper Mathew Ryan.

Spanish winger Jese, the man who was fouled, definitely wanted it and had to be angrily dragged away by team-mates. Xherdan Shaqiri, whose equaliser had brought Stoke back into the game, appeared to want it, too, while Saido Berahino seemed to be asking for the chance to end nearly two years without a top-flight goal.

Lambert refused to condemn any of them. ‘I would be more concerned if everybody shied away from it,’ he said. ‘They all wanted to take it, they wanted to win the game, and they wanted to score.

‘As far as I’m concerned whoever is confident is the best person and Charlie had scored a couple of weeks ago at Coventry, it’s just unfortunate the keeper made a great save.’

Australian international Ryan, Brighton’s record signing when he moved from Valencia in the summer, rubbed salt in the wound by saving again when Adam tried to curl a corner directly into goal straight after.

And then Anthony Knockaert cleared off the line from a Kurt Zouma header, just to make it clear it wasn’t Stoke’s day.

In reality, the row over who took the penalty was a sign of the fractures behind the scenes left from previous boss Mark Hughes.They were second best for most of the first half, and ripped to shreds when Brighton took the lead thanks to a superb team effort finished by Jose Izquierdo.

He was in yards of space on the left touchline before swapping passes with Solly March then Dale Stephens and striding into the box to score from 10 yards.

Dutch midfielder Davy Propper missed a simple header to double the lead, but then Shaqiri turned on some magic to equalise.

He jinked in from the edge of the box and curled a left foot shot into the far corner, beyond Ryan’s despairing dive.