Nick Powell scored the one objective of the sport with 11 minutes remaining after a defensive mistake by Conor Townsend as Stoke moved up into third place, only a level off West Brom and second-placed Bournemouth.
Solely the highest two groups on the finish of the common season are assured promotion to the Premier League.
“It was a terrific efficiency,” stated Stoke supervisor Michael O’Neill. “We knew it could be robust and the important thing was to attempt to not get dragged right into a conflict.
“We got here beneath stress however after we acquired our build-up play proper, we created some good probabilities.”
“Hopefully we’ll acquire extra perception from this win — that’s what this league is about.”
Albion boss Valerien Ismael had no complaints concerning the end result.
“I believe that tonight it was not ok to faux to get extra,” he stated. “We noticed quite a lot of errors from our facet and I believe it’s all the time an indication of tiredness.
“Stoke had been the higher staff tonight they usually deserved to win.”
Jacob Brown squandered an opportunity to place Stoke forward when he hit the submit after 9 minutes.
And Stoke went even nearer when Darnell Furlong’s personal objective was disallowed for a foul 5 minutes earlier than half-time.
Mario Vrancic hit the crossbar with a 25-yard free-kick and substitute Sam Surridge noticed a 71st-minute penalty saved earlier than the breakthrough lastly got here for Stoke.
Surridge had his spot-kick saved by Sam Johnstone after he had been fouled by the keeper in a race for a free ball.
However Powell lastly opened the scoring when he lobbed the ball over the advancing Johnstone from Tommy Smith’s go.
