Tony Mowbray has urged his team to make this weekend’s match against Portsmouth a “big day” as he takes charge of Albion at The Hawthorns for the first time since 2009.
The Baggies host Portsmouth on Saturday (ko 3pm) in the Sky Bet Championship - and the boss is targeting nothing but three points against their 18th-placed south coast opponents.
Visitors Pompey arrive having recorded successive league wins, while the hosts are enjoying an unbeaten home run stretching back nine fixtures.
And though Mowbray is well aware the visitors will pose a threat, he wants to see his side “get on the front foot” and earn a momentum-starting victory.
“I’m looking forward to being back in the dugout and I hope it’ll be a good day for all the Baggies fans,” said Tony.
“Portsmouth will come very focused and very driven. We have to get on the front foot and make them feel like they’re playing against a high-quality football team that can push them back.
“The data is that they hit more long balls than anybody in this league. That’s not a negative, of course. They probably recognised coming up a division that if they try and play from the back, they’ll get caught and might lose heavily in some games.
“They’ve got speed in wide areas and they’ll put balls in for the striker, who has been scoring some goals, particularly at home. We have to try and wrestle that away from them. They’re very committed, ‘at it’ and they’ll be desperate to improve on their away record.
“So, we’ll have to turn up. We’ll have to match that adrenaline and enthusiasm, and we’ll also have to bring our extra quality.
“Let’s make Saturday a big day for us. We want to win the game, get three points in the bag and show that the top six is always our target. The top four is a big ask, but we’ve got to try and be looking at the teams above us to try and claw them back if we can.
“There are enough games so let’s keep going. The only way we’ll do it is by winning football matches consecutively.”
Albion have endured a Championship-high 14 draws from their 28 fixtures so far this season - yet the boss believes there’s a simple solution to win more games before May.
“We have to score goals to win football matches,” explained Tony. “The other night, I think the stat was 63.5 percent possession. You have to threaten the goal, have more shots. I think we had 14 shots each, and obviously two of theirs flew into the top corner.
“There was plenty that was alright (at Middlesbrough). I think we can compete against all the teams. But you have to find ways to score.
“In both games now that I’ve watched over the last week, particularly in the second half, we’ve been pretty dominant. We have to get more out of those spells.
“I don’t want to just keep the ball and keep going across. I want the ball worked towards the final third and put into the areas where we can score a goal, and then people who are not part of the build-up have to try and get in the box.
“The best feeling in the world is scoring a goal in a football match, and running away to celebrate with the fans. Let’s enjoy more of that and see if we can improve that statistic moving forward.”