West Brom head coach Carlos Corberan has called on his players to become a 90-minute team and be more clinical after a 0-0 draw against Millwall.
The Baggies dominated after the break and hit the woodwork twice in 10 minutes in what Corberan described as the “perfect” second half after Alex Palmer saved Zian Flemming’s 27th-minute penalty.
But Corberan rued what might have been after this stalemate became their third draw in a week and took their winless run to four games.
“If you analyse the week, we couldn’t keep the levels of the second halves in the first,” said Corberan.
“And in the Championship, to make an excellent 45 or 50 minutes that tells us it’s not enough.
“That said, even if we do a full game (at that level) it might not be enough because in football what makes the difference is to be clinical in front of goal.
“The more options you create, the more chances and possibilities you have to score.
“Look at the stats in the second half – we had 73 per cent of the ball, the goal expected was 1.86 and their goal expected was zero.
“We did the perfect second half without the reward of the three points. In the first half, we didn’t play well enough.”
Brandon Thomas-Asante missed two chances – including the one that hit the bar – but Corberan defended the striker, who is without a goal in four games.
“He’s doing unbelievable work – he played 90 minutes on Wednesday night and 90 minutes here,” he said.
“It’s not easy to find a player who does what he does.
“You mustn’t forget that one year, two months ago he was playing in League Two.
“He’s still growing, but every time he’s on the pitch he shows a lot of value for the team.”
The penalty came after Kyle Bartley handled Ryan Longman’s corner, but Palmer saved his team-mate’s blushes.
After the break, West Brom dominated. Matt Phillips’ shot was blocked after Bartosz Bialkowski saved Thomas-Asante’s shot.
Then Alex Mowatt’s curling free-kick rattled the underside of the crossbar, before Thomas-Asante’s header was deflected onto the bar.
Millwall manager Gary Rowett praised his side’s battling spirit.
“Sometimes in the Championship you’ve got to dig in to get a point and a clean sheet and I thought we did that fantastically well,” he said.
Rowett admitted his side found it hard going in the second half after the spot-kick miss.
“I didn’t think it necessarily caused us problems in the first half but I felt certainly in the second half we struggled a bit,” he said.
“They changed formation – they kept Jeremy Sarmiento really high on the left and Matt Phillips high on the right and it pinned our five back.
“So we decided to change our formation to four at the back because there was no point in having five marking three players.
“It helped us gain a bit of stability but it didn’t necessarily allow us to get out.
“I just felt our use of the ball and our bravery in the second half wasn’t enough to get us on the attack.”
