Stoke boss Mark Hughes claimed the state of the Selhurst Park pitch restricted his side's attacking fluency in Saturday's 1-1 draw with Crystal Palace.
The Eagles went ahead on 11 minutes with James McArthur's first goal for the club, though the Potters were level within two minutes through Peter Crouch's tap-in.
Palace manager Neil Warnock complained that Hughes' side were "time-wasting from the start," though Hughes says the conditions played their part in his side's approach.
"We're reasonably pleased with a point at Palace," said Hughes. "Sometimes it's not easy to get on the ball and play the game you want to.
"The pitch wasn't great today in terms of trying to play the kind of passing game we've been playing of late.
"In the last period we didn't really give Palace any momentum in their play, and that's what the players and their fans thrive on.
"Ideally in an attacking sense we'd have liked to have produced more, but that wasn't able to happen and that's credit to how well Palace defended."
Hughes admits losing influential forward Bojan Krkic to a hip injury left his side imbalanced, saying: "We probably missed the spark of Bojan in that second half.
"We've struggled, certainly last year, on our travels, and it was about making sure we got something out of the game.
"Bojan got a bang on the fleshy part just above his hip bone, it's very painful but he'll only be a couple of days. We just missed that spark and his intelligence."
Information from the Press Association was used in this report.