Stoke have moved six points away from the bottom three in the Championship – and pulled within two points of Swansea with a game in hand – after reacting to Josh Tymon’s opener to win through goals from Wouter Burger, Bae Junho and Lewis Baker.
Robins knows it is a long work in progress but he can take encouragement from aspects of the game he is seeing develop – and it was good to see players with smiles on their faces
He said: “They were trying to (shoot more) but we’ve still got to be quicker and it’s got to be slicker in that final third. It will come but it’s going to take time. I’ll take the delivery from set plays, I’ll take the movement from that, I’ll take what we’re doing in trying to put teams under pressure and we did that so honestly it’s a game, we’ve won a game.
“The way the players celebrated I said to them, ‘I can’t wait to win something with you if this is how you celebrate a win.’ You can’t be too up when you win and you can’t be too down when you don’t but you’ve got to enjoy it and understand what you’ve done to get there. It’s all the more sweet for that.
“I’m delighted. They should enjoy it and then get back to work on Monday.”
It was a first win at the bet365 Stadium for Robins at the fourth attempt as Stoke boss, following 0-0 draws with Plymouth and Oxford and an FA Cup tie with Cardiff that went to penalties.
But he said: “It’s not about me, it’s about us and getting a deserved win from a good performance. You look at performance levels and performance levels bring results. That’s what’s happened today. The lads should take great heart from it because to a man I thought they were absolutely outstanding for most of the game. They got a lot of things right.”
