'Find improvements' - West Brom boss Carlos Corberan admits international break has come at 'perfect' time

West Brom boss Carlos Corberan has said the international break has come at the ‘perfect’ time for his team. They were held to a 0-0 draw at home to Millwall this weekend.

The Baggies are winless in their last three fixtures and have a couple of weeks off now to make some improvements. They weren’t able to find a winner against the Lions at The Hawthorns and will want to become more ruthless in front of goal.

West Brom are back in action on 19th October with an away trip to the Kassam Stadium to face Oxford United. They then have games at the end of the month against Blackburn Rovers and Cardiff City.

Speaking after their clash against Millwall, Corberan said: “I think instead of feeling frustrated it’s important to understand the game and find solutions to try and create more chances in the game. I think that we controlled the game a lot. That’s why we didn’t suffer any type of chances against us. Millwall are one team who are normally good in the transitions, but they didn’t make us suffer any type of transition.

“They’re also very dangerous from set-pieces, but we didn’t give them many chances to deliver balls into the box. However, at the other end of the pitch, we didn’t find enough possibilities to create big chances.

“The chance we had in the first half, the one where Semi Ajayi passed to Tom Fellows and Tom found Josh Maja, that was a clear chance. Sometimes in football, when you score these chances this is when the game changes.

“We needed to insist and keep trying to find the way to beat their defensive structure. In general, that was hard for us to achieve today. It was a similar game for us to Tuesday’s one in terms of attack, but in defence, Middlesbrough found a way to score the goal and create more chances than the opponents did today.

He added: “In football, I like to take the message from the results. The message from today tells us we still need to do better things, especially in attack, and that’s what we’re going to work on. Right now, we’re close to playing 20 per cent of the competition, which means we still have 80 per cent of the competition still to play.

“In this 80 per cent, we need to keep insisting on the things we do well such as our defending, but also work hard on improving certain aspects, such as creating more chances in games. If we had won today we would have achieved 19 points from our first nine games. We sit on 17. The fact we’re on 17 and not 19 and we’ve experienced some difficulties in this game shows we need to make improvements.

“The fact we now have an international break is a perfect period for us to find improvements in the squad, even though we know we will be missing some players who will be away. We are going to work and keep growing as a team. We are motivated and looking forward to the rest of the competition.”

West Brom are sat in 4th place in the table behind Sunderland, Sheffield United and Burnley. They are in the play-offs and haven’t made a bad start to the new campaign.

The Baggies have 17 points on the board from their first nine fixtures and have only lost two games. They have scored 12 goals and have conceded six times.