Mark Robins not shocked by Lewis Baker’s goalscoring exploits as Stoke go second

Stoke boss Mark Robins saluted two-goal Lewis Baker after the midfielder’s superb performance in the 3-0 win at Oxford which took the Potters into second place in the Championship.

Baker opened the scoring after 10 minutes, then delivered the corner from which Steven Nzonzi made it 2-0 before rounding off the scoring early in the second half.

Stoke’s third successive victory moved them up to second in the table and Robins hailed the influence Baker has had on his side.

“Lewis is a top player and there’s lots of goals in him,” Robins said.

“You know he’s not going to be far away from the back of the net. He’s just got a lot of quality, and he’s good in different areas of the pitch.

“His individual performance was really good, and so was the whole team’s.

“We didn’t try and overdo things – once or twice we did and had one or two touches too many – but the aspects of the performances I like are when we do things simply and when we do things in and out of possession really quickly.

“We were good in possession and equally good out of possession.”

Next up for Stoke is a mouthwatering battle of the top two at home to his old club Coventry.

Robins added: “On Saturday we will be testing ourselves against the side that’s top of the division.

“It’s first against second at this stage of the season – fantastic. I’m really looking forward to it because they’ve been really free-scoring.

“They’ve had a group that’s been together for a few years now, which is an advantage for them. For us it’s a home game and it will be a really good atmosphere.

I imagine it will be pretty noisy, and we look forward to it.”

Oxford head coach Gary Rowett felt his team were just not good enough on the night.

Rowett said: “I would say that was as poor a performance as we’ve had since I’ve been here, and that was disappointing on the back of finishing the way we did against Millwall.

“We should have been a goal to the good early on – Greg (Leigh) gets a brilliant chance and maybe just mistimes his jump.

“Then the first goal we concede is so poor, the second one is a set piece where we let Nzonzi run off us for a good finish.

“Then the third one comes right at the start of the second half when you’ve changed things tactically and you hope you’ve given yourself a chance.

“That summed up the evening, where we can’t get going because we don’t give ourselves an opportunity to do that.

“But it was a really disappointing evening, I can’t really explain why. It’s just one of those evenings where things just don’t look quite right, and hopefully we don’t continue it into next weekend.”