Carlos Corberan says handing out senior minutes to several youngsters during Tuesday night’s Carabao Cup first-round tie at Fleetwood Town was extremely “important”.
The Baggies, who made 11 changes for the clash at Highbury Stadium, were beaten 2-1 by the hosts.
Mo Faal opened the scoring inside the first ten minutes, but the hosts hit back twice before the break with Albion unable to respond after the interval.
The boss says it’s a pity the academy graduates won’t get another chance to show their capabilities in the competition.
Carlos said: “The target today was to keep going in this competition.
“We changed the whole team from the last game, but I think it was important to give minutes to a lot of our younger players and a lot of the players who didn’t complete a full pre-season with us.
“Unfortunately, we haven’t achieved the result we wanted to achieve.
“In general, we were dominating the first minutes of the match. We scored the first goal, but after that goal, they started to press more and we lost the positions in attack and we lost control of the game.
“We lost the ball in the middle of the pitch twice and they used transitions to score their two goals. Those goals were decisive.
“In the second period we tried to attack, but unfortunately, we didn’t create too many chances. In the chances we did create, we weren’t quite clinical enough.
“It’s a pity we couldn’t keep going in this competition because it would have given a chance for the young players to play and to show they can help us get further in a competition.
“For me, these minutes are important minutes because it’s not easy to have the opportunity to play in the first team as an academy player. Today, we gave them the chance.
“Now, they are not going to have as many opportunities. They need to perform in training and in games with the PL2 team and when they train with the senior side.
