Carrow Road will almost certainly have to wait a day longer than originally scheduled to welcome back Premier League football after Stoke City completed a 2-0 aggregate victory over Hajduk Split with a 1-0 second leg win in Croatia last night.
The result means the Potters will be involved in more Europa League action on the Thursday before they were due to visit Norwich City on Saturday, August 20 – which will lead to the domestic fixture being pushed back 24 hours to the Sunday.
That was the last thing on the mind of Stoke manager Tony Pulis, however, as he spoke of his pride in his team's performance. The Potters, who went into the second leg with a 1-0 lead from last week's first leg at the Britannia Stadium, put in an impressively controlled display over 90 minutes in front of a vociferous home crowd. And their performance was capped with a goal in stoppage time, Ryan Shotton appearing to get the final touch on Dean Whitehead's cross ahead of defender Ljubo Milicevic. 'I'm very proud of the players,' said Pulis. 'We know Hajduk are a very famous and great club, and they have fantastic supporters. We knew the atmosphere would be brilliant. But we thought that if we played our game, and we played as well as we can we'd have as good a chance as them of winning the game.'
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