Carlos Corberán praised his players’ “fighting mentality” in Albion’s impressive 3-1 win at QPR on the opening day.
Lucas Anderson’s early header was cancelled out by Josh Maja’s hat-trick as the Baggies left West London with a deserved victory.
The boss insists he saw the squad “believing” in their “possibilities” and says his team managed the encounter well.
Carlos said: “I think the win today was based on two key aspects.
“One was the competitive mentality of the players, because when you play away and when you concede a goal, you can only try and take something positive with a strong mentality.
“They were fighting until the end for the result they wanted to achieve, and the second thing was the belief in themselves.
“Even after we conceded, they were believing in their possibilities and for me today when we start the season, what we did in the past hasn’t worked. So it means that we need to win to gain the confidence off of everyone; the players need to win, I need the win to get the confidence off my players and they need to feel I am helping them.
“They need to win my confidence to make me feel I can trust them. Every single team-mate, every single player has to win the confidence of every single team-mate to show they are going to go to the pitch and fight for the result that we want.
“We as a team need to win the confidence of our fans - showing to them that we are going to compete with our possibilities while giving our best.
“I don’t know if the result was fair or not, but it was the result it was and always when you achieve one win it is normally because you have done more good things than bad things.
“Today I saw the team manage some aspects of the game well, having some mistakes like, for example, the defending of the first goal from the throw. But having mistakes sometimes makes the players play with a lot of energy.
“But in general, I am happy with the fighting mentality of the players.
“We are always very happy when we see one player, who has suffered a lot, come back to the pitch and for me every player on the pitch needs to play with the maximum concentration to help the team and have a contribution on the result we want to achieve.
“Today, Josh Maja has had a very good level of impact on the game because it is not easy to score three goals, and all three had a lot of quality.
“But with Josh Maja, after one season without playing many games, we have to manage his minutes well and this is one of the positions we need to strengthen because we need to protect every single player.
“I think if you wait for the results to get the confidence, you are never going to win football games.
“You need to believe in your commitment, your fighting mentality and your work to win football games.”
