Steve Bruce says his side must use their early-season frustration as motivation going forward as they target a first league victory of the campaign on Saturday afternoon.
The Baggies, who have picked up three points from their first four matches in the Sky Bet Championship, welcome high-flying Hull City to The Hawthorns this weekend (ko 3pm).
Albion have produced spells of impressive football in their opening fixtures, however Bruce’s men have been unable to convert their dominance in games into wins.
The boss says everyone associated with the club is disappointed not to have tasted three points as of yet, but also stressed how crucial it is to channel that feeling and turn it into a positive.
Bruce said: “A win changes everything. A win takes away the frustration.
“We’re frustrated because we’ve played well enough to win in two or three of our games so far.
“We didn’t play as well as we have done on Wednesday night against Cardiff City, but I will say that we didn’t get beat and I think there might have been stages last year when we would’ve lost that game.
“We’re disappointed we haven’t won, but there’s a long way to go and we’ve got another game on Saturday to try and get our first victory in the Championship.
“I think we can use that disappointment and frustration to our advantage by making it our motivation.
“We know how well we’ve played in some games and we feel as though we should be sat on more points than what we are currently on.
“We’ve got to find that consistency. Too often we play really well the one week and then not hitting the same levels the next.
“That’s clearly an area where we need to improve.
“We have to get up and running on Saturday. If we can get a win against Hull then we’ll have taken four points from the six on offer in our last two matches which is the return you are looking for come the end of the season.
“Our performance will need to be much better though than it was on Wednesday.”
Bruce’s former club Hull City are Albion’s next opponents and the Tigers arrive in buoyant mood having collected eight points from their first four games.
The Baggies boss is expecting a stern test on Saturday afternoon from a side he believes is “completely different” to last term.
“They’ve had an ownership change and plenty of new faces through the door.
“They’ve had a really good start to the season and their results have been impressive, especially the last two against Norwich and Burnley. It’ll be a good test for us.
“Hull will be a completely different proposition to what they were last year, that’s for sure.
“I had a great four years at Hull. If I could replicate those four years I had there at Hull, here at West Bromwich Albion, we’d take it right now.
“We managed to get a couple of promotions, made our way to an FA Cup final and qualified for Europe. I had really happy times there.”
