Baggies skipper Jake Livermore says the players won’t be making any excuses for Friday’s loss at Stoke, but insisted the squad won’t dwell on the defeat.
Albion were beaten for the first time in the Sky Bet Championship this season at the bet365 Stadium, where Nick Powell’s late lob over Sam Johnstone proved enough to secure the points for the hosts.
But despite the disappointment of seeing their club-record run come to an end, Livermore believes his side can point to an abundance of positives from their opening 11 league games.
He said: “It was a tough night, but we won’t focus too much on the negatives.
“We’ve had so many positives recently and we’ll be sure to take them into the international break, rather than too many negatives from Friday.
“I can’t fault the boys for their effort and performances in this block of games. We are challenging right at the top end of the division after 11 games and that’s exactly where we wanted to be.
“When we are winning, we can’t get too carried away and when we are losing or the performances aren’t great, we can’t get too low.
“There’s a long way to go and we are learning more and more each game.
“Teams are coming at us and we’re having different problems to solve.
“Unfortunately on Friday, we came up short at Stoke.
“The first ten to fifteen minutes I thought the intensity was there, but after that they switched it up and played in our half more than we managed to play in theirs.
“They beat our press and we’ve got to take responsibility for that and learn.
“We won’t be using any excuses.
“We’ve got to move on from this now and be sure to rest and recover over the international break, ready for another run of important matches.”
