Carlos Corberán says Albion’s performance in the opening half at Hillsborough was far from the level he and the players expect.
The Baggies were 2-0 down at the break against Sheffield Wednesday following an unfortunate own goal from Darnell Furlong and a Josh Windass header, with the Baggies second-best for large parts of the period.
They fought back to 2-2 thanks to efforts from Josh Maja and substitute Alex Mowatt, however Anthony Musaba’s late winner inflicted a first league defeat of the season on Corberán’s men.
The boss believes the side gave themselves far too much work to do and accepted they didn’t “manage the game well enough” - though he wanted to begin his chat with WBA TV by wishing the supporter taken ill in the away end all the very best.
Carlos said: “First of all, all of our thoughts are with the Albion fan who fell ill during the game. We all hope they are getting better and better and it’s very important that they beat this really worrying situation.
“On the game, for me, we didn’t show our level in the first half of the game.
“We haven’t competed in the level that we needed to and we’ve made the game more difficult for ourselves.
“We’ve got ourselves back into it at 2-2 from being 2-0 down, but in the next action, we have conceded the goal.
“We didn’t manage the minutes well enough after scoring our second goal. We were giving away fouls which meant we couldn’t control the game.
“We didn't defend the action where they scored the second goal well enough.
“I didn’t see too many chances for them in the second half. We were controlling the game and creating chances, but in that first half, we didn’t show the start that we needed to.
“We know they are a team set up to press and they have a lot of transitions. For the first goal, we tried to press from a position which was a disadvantage. We cannot press and we had to be solid. They switched the play and the ball has gone in off Darnell Furlong. It was the first time that they arrived into the final third of the pitch.
“We didn’t start to attack and we didn’t find the way to break their structure in defence.
“After, for the second goal, they used another one of their strengths which is balls forward from the back. We were working on this before the game, but unfortunately in football, there are some situations which you don’t manage well enough.
“They scored their second goal from one ball from the back to just in front of our goalkeeper.
“In general, we were not able to attack well enough until John Swift dropped in a little deeper to find balls in midfield positions. From there, the team was growing and attacking better, however we’ve wasted 45 minutes of the match.
“We need to analyse the game and take responsibility to improve.
“You’re not always going to achieve the result that you want to achieve. Now it’s about a reaction. We’ll go again on Tuesday.
“We like to extend good moments, but today we couldn’t. The fact we have suffered one defeat shows us we have to put more energy into our next performance.
“If you hate the feeling of defeat, which we do, you want to recover the feeling of victory as quickly as possible.”
