You can forgive Paul Hart the cliché that he is taking each game as it comes because he can do nothing else while Alexandre Gaydamak, the Portsmouth owner, ponders his next move. Hart, the director of youth operations turned caretaker manager, said he had “planned” up to the next game, away to Chelsea a week tomorrow.

“Various people have been very supportive and if this helps in any way to repay some of that then I think it is quid pro quo,” he said. Quid is certainly at the forefront of Portsmouth’s thoughts: the millions of pounds that top-flight status brings. Hart’s two games have made a case for an extended stay in the job: Portsmouth have added four points and they dealt well with Stoke City’s muscularity on Saturday.

Niko Kranjcar implied that resolve had stiffened since Tony Adams’s dismissal two weeks ago. “We’ve lost games in the last minute, the best example was Liverpool,” the playmaker said. “Probably in the last few weeks we would have not fought back.”

Liam Lawrence, the Stoke midfield player, was booked for slapping Hermann Hreidarsson. “He gave me a pinch in the back of the neck,” Lawrence said. “I let the first one go and then he did it again. We had a bit of banter. It’s all right. It just happens.”

Playground games aside, entertainment was condensed into the final 15 minutes, when Kranjcar gave Portsmouth the lead, but Stoke quickly replied with two goals in two minutes from James Beattie, the first a penalty wrongly awarded for handball against Glen Johnson. After spending 6½ years with Southampton, Beattie was not a popular figure among the visiting fans. “I enjoy it if they want to give me some stick,” he said.

A fair result was cruelly secured in injury time when Ryan Shawcross deflected Hreidarsson’s shot into his own net: the Iceland defender’s meanest trick of all.

Stoke City (4-4-2): T Sorensen 6 — A Wilkinson 6, Abdoulaye Faye 7, R Shawcross 6, D Higginbotham 6 — L Lawrence 6 (sub: M Tonge, 66min 6), Amdy Faye 6, S Diao 6, D Pugh 6 — M Sidibe 6 (sub: R Cresswell, 84), J Beattie 7. Substitutes not used: S Simonsen, G Whelan, D Kitson, H Camara, I Sonko. Booked: Lawrence. Next: Aston Villa (a).

Portsmouth (4-4-2): D James 7 — G Johnson 6, S Campbell 7, S Distin 7, H Hreidarsson 6 — J Pennant 7, A Basinas 5 (sub: H Mullins, 71), S Davis 5, N Kranjcar 6 (sub: N Kanu, 89) — P Crouch 6, D Nugent 6 (sub: N Belhadj, 89). Substitutes not used: A Begovic, Y Kaboul, N Pamarot, J Utaka. Booked: Hreidarsson, Johnson, Davis. Next: Chelsea (h).

Referee: M Jones Attendance: 26,354