Stoke Mark Hughes was delighted with his side's stunning first-half display against Arsenal as they edged a pulsating encounter 3-2 at the Britannia Stadium on Saturday.
Peter Crouch scored the fastest goal of the Premier League season just 19 seconds into the match, with Bojan Krkic and Jon Walters adding two more to hand the hosts a 3-0 lead before before half-time.
The Potters went into the game on the back of three straight defeats -- the last two against Liverpool and Manchester United -- and Hughes was relieved his side survived a late Gunners fightback to land a much-needed win.
"We've been disappointed in recent weeks," he said. "That's why I was looking forward to this game because we weren't playing badly and we felt there were opportunities today to test Arsenal and that's what we did.
"We were encouraged by the early goal, obviously. You don't expect to score after 20 seconds.
"From that point onwards I thought our play was good, and it was an outstanding second goal by Bojan, who once again has put in a really impressive performance. Since he's come back into the side, he's arguably been our man of the match in every game.
"3-0 at half-time doesn't happen very often, certainly not to me anyway, so I was delighted with that. But we had the scars of the West Ham game, where we raced to a 2-0 lead and let it slip, so we used that as a reminder at half-time."
Stoke could have gone four goals after 65 minutes, though Bojan's effort was belatedly ruled out when referee Anthony Taylor ruled Mame Biram Diouf had blocked goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez's view from an offside position.
Hughes felt the game swung on that decision as Santi Cazorla and Aaron Ramsey scored soon after to set up a tense finish, but praised his players for holding out for the win.
"It should have been 4-0, I'm really disappointed with the decision of the referee to chalk off an outstanding individual goal by Bojan," he said.
"By all accounts he's said Diouf was interfering with play. We had a similar situation when we conceded a second goal at Old Trafford, so there's inconsistency there.
"Those things are big decisions and need to be correctly called. That puts a spring in their step and all of a sudden we're looking at 3-2 and we're hanging on when the game should have been dead and buried.
"But we got ourselves together and for the most part saw it out quite comfortably."