Carlos Corberán was pleased with the way his players “competed” in a physical encounter at Luton on Friday, but says his team couldn’t “impose their identity”.
The Baggies drew 1-1 with the Hatters at Kenilworth Road in the Sky Bet Championship, scoring in first-half added time courtesy of Josh Maja before the hosts bagged a second-half equaliser through Tahith Chong.
The boss named a brand new back four owing to a number of injuries in that particular area of the pitch and believes the defensive members of the team dealt reasonably well with Luton’s direct approach, yet also accepted his team were unable to display the best of their own style.
Carlos said: “In general I think the team was very focused to compete, but in some moments, too focused on competing and not focused enough on imposing the identity that we have, especially in the space that we wanted to play in in the attacking half.
“We know that they are a team who are aggressive and will press us if we play from the back like normally we do. We conceded more chances than we managed to create in the first half.
“We didn’t put the ball in the attacking half as much as we wanted to and they were better than us in the first half. The second half was more balanced, but it’s true that we didn’t do enough to achieve the three points.
“I think to play against the strikers that they have with their height was a high challenge for our back line of four. In general I saw, in defence, Darnell Furlong, Torbjørn Heggem, Mason Holgate and Callum Styles doing well.
“We had some difficulty imposing ourselves with the ball and finding better solutions with the ball, however the defenders – playing together for the first time - were very concentrated on what they had to do to at least achieve the point.
We didn’t have many chances in the first half, but with the only chance we had we achieved the goal. We had more possibilities to attack in the last third of the pitch in the second half. In the moments we were attacking more we couldn’t score another goal.
“We always want to create more chances and do more things in attack, while also staying concentrated and not losing the game.
“Every point you get in this league always has value. At the same time, you always want to achieve three points and when you have weeks when you are not achieving that then we can understand the frustration our people have.
“We’re focused on giving our best and improving on things which will help us achieve the points we want to achieve.”
