Something you always expect from any game at the Britannia Stadium, is a tough, turgid attritional game of football.
However, on Sunday in the English Premier League, Stoke City unfurled their attacking intent, with only the superior firepower of Liverpool (read SAS - Luis Suarez and Daniel Sturridge) stopping Mark Hughes' men from coming away with anything.
In an enthralling Premier League game, that swung one way and then the other, Liverpool picked up a 5-3 victory, with Suarez, of course he did, scoring a brace and Sturridge, on his return from injury, grabbing a goal and an assist.
Liverpool opened the scoring in just the fifth minute of the match, as Aly Cissokho's long-range effort, which was flying well wide, took a big deflection off Ryan Shawcross to nestle into the net.
Suarez seemed to have put Liverpool on their way to a possibly big victory, at a ground they have never won in the Premier League, when the Uruguayan made full use of some shambolic defending from Stoke to slot home in the 32nd minute.
However, Stoke fought back brilliantly courtesy two Liverpool old boys. First Peter Crouch headed in an outstanding goal off a cross from Marko Arnautovic, before Charlie Adam thumped in a belter from distance to pull the game to 2-2 at halftime.
It was always going to be a tense second half, and Liverpool got their noses in front yet again, albeit courtesy a rather fortunate decision. Raheem Sterling charged down a clearance from Marc Wilson, before going down inside the penalty box rather easily under the challenge of the Stoke defender, who had a torrid time of it on Sunday.
A penalty was given, and Steven Gerrard, in his 650th appearance for the club, made no mistake sending Jack Butland the wrong way.
"It is [a disappointing defeat] because in terms of our performance I thought we were excellent, obviously we have made individual errors and collective errors and things have gone against us decisions," Stoke manager Mark Hughes said.
"I thought the penalty decision was really a poor one from the referee's point of view. I didn't think it merited a penalty decision there we are disappointed. The lad's gone over too easy he's looking for a penalty he immediately looks up claiming a penalty and the referee has bought it.
"Listen we have never been ahead in the game and unfortunately we had to force the issue and given the ability on the break they have got they got us a couple of times. We just gave ourselves too much to do today.
"Unfortunately 2-0 down to a freak deflection and we didn't deal with a long punt up front so we are 2-0 down without them really having a shot on goal at that point. So we showed great character to come back level at half-time and then we are thinking we have got a platform to really go again and lo and behold we get a poor decision for the penalty"
Sturridge was brought on a little after the hour mark, and the striker made an immediate impact, picking a nice pass for Suarez to delightfully slot home Thierry-Henry-like into the bottom corner from a tight angle for his 22nd goal of the season.
Stoke refused to give up, and found their third goal via Jonathan Walters five minutes from time, but Liverpool put the game to bed on 87 minutes when Sturridge, off a pass from Suarez, found the back of the net at the second time of asking.
The three points took Liverpool back up to fourth, after the Reds had been pushed down to sixth following wins for Everton and Tottenham on Saturday.
"It was a brilliant win for us," Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers said. "Someone said beforehand that Liverpool had never won here in the Barclays Premier League and we all know why.
"It's a notoriously difficult place to play. But I want to give immense credit to the players today. I thought it was a really difficult game on paper and on the field.
"We were under a bit of pressure because a lot of the teams around us won yesterday, so we knew we had to put in a performance. To come here and get five goals and be that inventive and creative was fantastic. It's great credit to them.
"We entered into the game today with 18 games to go, nine at home and nine away. Seven of those nine games away from home are against teams that were in the bottom half. That doesn't mean they are gimmes, by any means -- it's a very tough league."
