Lamine Cisse was forced off in the first half of Stoke City's goalless draw with Bristol City

Stoke City are waiting to assess the extent of the damage to Lamine Cisse as he leaves the bet365 Stadium in a supportive boot.

Cisse had been threatening to get behind the defence and had already made one one-on-one when he rolled his ankle in the 21st minute as he was tackled by George Tanner.

The 23-year-old forward tried to shrug off the injury but it was clear he could not continue and he joins pal Eric Bocat in the treatment room. Bocat, who has been a key figure in the opening weeks, suffered a knee injury in a 1-0 win at Derby that is expected to keep him out until the international break.

Robins, when asked about Cisse’s condition, said: “I don’t know yet. He’s got a boot on, which I think is a precautionary thing. Like I said last week with Eric, it doesn’t look (major). He’s rolled his ankle, rocked his ankle, so it might be something, it might be nothing. Hopefully it’s nothing.”

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It was a hard day for Stoke, who failed to score for the first time this season.

George Hirst replaced Cisse and the Potters clocked up 64 per cent possession but they couldn’t threaten Brad Collins enough in the visiting goal.

Luke McNally made a recovery tackle on Hirst when it seemed he was through for a one-on-one while Ben Wilmot was denied by Collins’ boot when he tried to pounce at a corner. Ethan Galbraith and Jack McGlynn went close with long rangers.

But there won’t be a rush for copies of the game on film and Robins started his post-match press conference with the line: “Did anybody enjoy it?!”

He added: “It was really difficult. I don’t want to be too critical and I can’t be because I don’t think it’s warranted. We tried to do everything we could to get a goal but also I didn’t think we were good enough. We were moving in different areas and we don’t learn from that.

“They changed shape. They came for a difficult game and the weather made it doubly so.

“We had a good chance early on with Lamine getting through but the wind had obviously blown it back onto his foot. He’s got to try to get it out of his feet to score. He’s in. He’s the other side of the defence. He’s through. He is a little bit hit and miss in terms of his finishing at the moment but we know what he’s capable of. I expected us to get a shot from that.

“Likewise when he unfortunately got injured and George came on, George went the same way and let it come across to his left foot, from the pass from Ben Wilmot, the covering defender can get to him.

“We tried everything but we’ve been in positions when we’ve taken safe decisions to get on the ball rather than be more incisive. That’s the only disappointment. It’s just where we’re at.

“When a team comes and sits like that – it’s the first time a team has done it – we have to take some lessons from it and where we need to be positioned on the pitch.

“I thought we had total control of the ball and total control of the game but we took easy options. When a defender has got space, take the ball into the space and commit one of their midfield players. You’ve got one over there anyway so make it a second.

“If we roll out into space in the sides we have to maintain connections and we didn’t do that so we ended pulling apart rather than building connections. Those are things players have got to see.

“We looked dangerous from set plays and I thought it looked like we were going to score from one of them.

“We tried to negate their threat and I don’t think there was that much until the end. I got caught between making a change in the first half for Lamine and making a second one to bring Junior (Tchamadeu on because I wanted pace down the side – and wanting to go two up front but not doing it too early. In the conditions I didn’t want to get to a point when we started playing forward without control because we saw what happened in first-half when the ball was flying out of play.

“Sometimes you get beyond one of their defenders you have to get a cross in, like Junior did at the end. That’s exactly what we needed. He got into a great position and I was hoping he’d find someone to just roll onto it and slam it into the back of the net. To be fair to them, they have thrown bodies in front when they needed and we didn’t manager to get the winner.

“But if you can’t win, don’t lose. It was a tough game because of the conditions and how they approached it.”