‘Comical’ – Tony Mowbray pulls West Brom victim card after Coventry City defeat..
A dejected Tony Mowbray spoke to the media after West Brom’s 2-0 defeat at Coventry City.
West Bromwich Albion manager Tony Mowbray believes his players are just as frustrated as he is following the 2-0 loss away at Coventry City on Good Friday.
The Baggies knew they had to win at the CBS Arena to stand any realistic chance of finishing in the play-off positions but they fell well short, dominated from start to finish by a confident and composed Sky Blues side.
It took just six minutes for Jack Rudoni to open the scoring as the Coventry number five slotted home first time from a low Haji Wright cross. West Brom defended appallingly as Darnell Furlong didn’t press Wright fiercely enough and Alex Mowatt made a hopeless attempt at clearing Wright’s delivery.
Matt Grimes made the most of a laughable John Swift error to put Coventry two ahead just after the interval, skipping in to dispossess the midfielder in Albion’s box and slotting the ball into the bottom corner. West Brom’s misery was then compounded as Callum Styles was sent off for a second bookable offence.
Mowbray, who spent much of the game slumped on a stool in his technical area, was visibly miserable as he arrived in the press room after the game. His dejection was almost too severe, as it seemed the belief had been completely zapped out of him. There should at least be some passion there, but the manager wasn’t forcing it.
There was an admission that Coventry deserved to win on this occasion, but Mowbray soon turned the attention back to other recent poor results, claiming West Brom have been the victim of misfortune and deserve more points on the board for their ‘domination’ in matches.
“The players are very frustrated,” Mowbray admitted. “The players know this team should be having more points from the domination in games that we’ve had over the last month or so. It’s been almost comical that we haven’t had the points that we deserve, yet you have to earn them and you have to put the ball in the opposition net.
“You have to stop the opposition scoring and that’s what football is, everything else in between is irrelevant when it comes down to writing the narrative in your stories and your newspapers. You have to win, you have to accrue points. You can’t be a great team and be at the bottom of the table.
“I think over the course of this season, for whatever reason, we haven’t found the way to put the ball in the opposition net. You can’t have less than 50 goals, you need to be at 70 goals in my opinion. We haven’t scored enough goals this season to warrant us thinking we’re going to get promotion. We have to change that,” Mowbray said.
Friday’s result at the CBS Arena leaves West Brom with a huge mountain to climb if they are to achieve a top-six finish. It would take a miracle for the Baggies to recover from here as they are now six points behind sixth-placed Coventry and seven adrift from Bristol City in fifth.
The three games remaining are against teams in the bottom four, at least, but even they will be tough as the opponents are fighting for their lives at the opposite end of the Championship standings.
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