Intro:

Stoke City manager Mark Hughes defends banned midfielder Charlie Adam - after stamping on Arsenal's Olivier Giroud last weekend - at a news conference on Friday in Stoke, England, ahead of match away to Norwich City.

Script:

SOUNDBITE (English) Mark Hughes, Stoke City manager:

"The game is taken out of context and incidents are taken out of context and they are slowed down to the Nth degree then they can always look worse than they actually are. Our view, and we stick with the view, is that it was totally unintentional. Charlie (Adam) was not even looking at the player (Olivier Giroud). He was looking at putting his foot down to change direction. And we stand by that. Unfortunately, once the process was set into motion then we always feared that we would lose him."