Conor Townsend has offered an honest assessment of Albion’s final day defeat at Swansea City and the 2022/23 Sky Bet Championship season as a whole.
The Baggies were beaten 3-2 at the Swansea.com Stadium on Monday afternoon – a result which ended their hopes of finishing in the top six and having a shot at promotion to the Premier League.
Townsend believes his side were unlucky to lose on the day but also admitted the Baggies’ poor start to the campaign didn’t help their Play-Off aspirations, with Carlos Corberán’s men finishing 9th in the table.
Conor said: “We’re obviously really disappointed.
“We went ahead twice in the game, but they managed to get two equalisers and then a late winner.
“Swansea are a good team and they created chances, but I believe we had the better of the chances and we created more than them. We needed to take them.
“We were chasing the game towards the end of it and we were wide open going for the win.
“It’s a good free-kick which has won them the game, but I don’t think it was a fair reflection of the game.
“We knew we had to try and win it and we were pushing for that at the end which left us open to counter attacks.
“The disappointment of not getting in the Play-Offs is hard to take.
“We gave ourselves such a mountain to climb at the start of the season having picked up just 14 points from the first 17 games.
“There’s been such a good turnaround since Carlos has been at the club. We’ve had a lot of good results and a lot of positives.
“It’s been a long season and we’ve had some really big injuries. It’s probably the worst season of injuries I’ve experienced at a club. We’ve had big injuries to important players at crucial times of the season.
“We gave ourselves a shot, but we fell short eventually.
“At one point we were in the Play-Off positions but we couldn’t sustain the form that helped us get there in late January, early February time.
“But, over the course of the season, the final table doesn’t lie and I think every team ends up where they deserve to end up.
“I think if we had started the season better we would have been comfortably in the top six.
“The positive is that we’ve got the gaffer here and what he’s been able to do since his arrival.
“We have to look at next season now in a positive way. We’ve got to rest up and recover over the summer and be ready to come back next season with achieving something special on our minds.”
