Valérien Ismaël says he wants to see ruthlessness in attack as his side set their sights on a positive result at Huddersfield Town this weekend.
The Baggies sit third in the Sky Bet Championship table ahead of Saturday’s trip to the John Smith’s Stadium, six points off the automatic promotion places.
Albion were held to a “frustrating” 1-1 draw by Middlesbrough two weeks ago before international football took over for the final time in 2021.
But the boss believes the work he has been able to carry out with the players on the training pitch during the break will benefit his side’s chances of delivering more complete performances.
Val said: “We’ve gone through all of our principles over the international break.
“We’ve improved in terms of possession. We are higher up in the table in terms of possession stats now compared to the start of the season.
“We want to continue to work with the players in this area to give us more confidence, as well as to give us more options in terms of patterns to play against different opponents in different situations.
“We’ve also worked on patterns of play when we are out of possession to make sure everyone knows exactly what I want to see on the pitch.
“It’s been a very good week of training.
“We need to be more ruthless.
“We are having more and more possession and creating more and more chances.
“I think, from that point of view, we are on our way. But football is all about scoring goals and being ruthless, especially when teams make the games difficult, which we often find.
“We need more energy and more desire in the attacking areas of the pitch to make sure we can be successful.
“We need to try and score more goals.”
Albion will be backed by a sold-out away end at Huddersfield, with just shy of 2,500 supporters making the trip to west Yorkshire.
All three league defeats for the Baggies this season have come in the last three games on the road, and Ismaël insists there’s a “big desire” to get back to winning ways away from B71.
“We have a big desire to win on Saturday.
“We have lost our last three away from home and it’s a big frustration.
“We can do better. We can do more.
“We’ve shown already that we can do it.
“We want to change the story. We know we need a win and we want to make sure we have a good start at Huddersfield.
“It will be a game where we will have to be perfect in every sense.
“Out of possession, we will have to press. In possession, we will look for a quick start and if we can’t get one, then we have to be patient and be ruthless when we get the chances.”
