The Britannia Stadium is fast emerging as a venue to strike fear and trepidation into visiting opponents and Roy Keane became the latest manager to see his players leave bullied and bruised.

The secret of Rory Delap’s gargantuan throw may be out, but it still proved too difficult for Keane’s Sunderland side to deal with as Ricardo Fuller pounced on a missile to head home a deserved winner.

Any team to escape unscathed from this inhospitable venue deserves a bravery award and this was another performance that will provide Tony Pulis, the Stoke City manager, with hope that he can ensure his record of never being relegated remains untarnished. “We will lose more games this year than we’re used to after promotion, but we’ve just go to make sure everybody stays level,” Pulis said. “That was the best we’ve played for 90 minutes. The tempo of the game was very good and we thoroughly deserved the win.”

At home Stoke have taken three points off Aston Villa and Tottenham Hotspur and they fully deserved reward for a typically ferocious start last night. A Delap throw almost led to an opening goal in the tenth minute. He hurled the ball into the penalty area and Mamady Sidibe flicked it on before a reflex volley from Fuller rebounded off Anton Ferdinand, the Sunderland defender, four yards from goal and ran clear.

But Stoke could not convert their most promising opportunity thus far just after an hour. Fuller manoeuvred himself into a yard of room in the area and his shot took a deflection off Phil Bardsley to drift across the box, falling agonisingly short of Sidibe.

Their pressure finally paid off 17 minutes from time when another Delap throw was headed into the corner of the net by Fuller to secure a third home win of the season.

Sunderland manufactured one late chance with Kenwyne Jones, the forward who was making his second appearance of the season, forcing a fine save from Thomas Sorensen, but Keane was unimpressed. “It was probably our worst performance of the season,” he said. “If you don’t perform, you win nothing. There’s no excuses. We started sloppily and we didn’t deserve anything from the game.”

Stoke City (4-4-2): T Sorensen — A Griffin, Abdoulaye Faye, R Shawcross, D Higginbotham — T Soares (sub: M Tonge, 69min), S Olofinjana (sub: Amdy Faye, 87), S Diao, R Delap — M Sidibe, R Fuller (sub: D Kitson, 90). Substitutes not used: S Simonsen, V Pericard, A Wilkinson, I Sonko. Booked: Abdoulaye Faye, Griffin.

Sunderland (4-4-2): M Fulop — P Bardsley, A Ferdinand, D Collins, G McCartney — S Malbranque (sub: A Reid, 75), D Whitehead, D Yorke (sub: K Jones, 46), K Richardson — E-H Diouf, D Cissé (sub: M Chopra, 62). Substitutes not used: N Colgan, T Taino, N Nosworthy, G Leadbitter. Booked: Malbranque

Referee: C Foy.