West Brom star makes ‘bottled it’ admission as Albion fall behind in Championship play-off race

West Bromwich Albion star Jed Wallace admitted his side have “bottled” their chances of a Championship play-off place following a potentially fatal Easter weekend. The Baggies suffered a 3-1 defeat to Rotherham United on Good Friday followed by a 2-2 draw with fellow relegation strugglers Queens Park Rangers on Monday.

These two disappointing results left a serious dent in their top-six hopes, with them now perched in 11th place, and Wallace is disappointed to see their chances fade away. “We haven’t played at a level we know we can,” the winger told BBC WM.

“It’s the feeling for all of us, we’ve shown so much character to fight and claw our way into position from where we were at the start of the season to give ourselves a good opportunity. I don’t think anyone can individually say they’ve played well in the last couple of games and we need that, we’ve got good players at this level and if the big players don’t turn up then we’re not going to win games.

“It’s an easy excuse to say we’re missing five or six big players but that’s football. We’ve got a good squad and we’ve not used the opportunity to play anywhere near the level we have over the last three or four months and most of our careers, so we’ve definitely let ourselves and the fans down over the last two games.”

Albion went 2-0 up against QPR after just 13 minutes on Monday afternoon, but they quickly combusted conceding twice including a glaring error from young goalkeeper Josh Griffiths. Wallace is keen to deflect away from the mistake by the former Cheltenham Town and Lincoln City loanee.

“It’s basically a loss really,” Wallace admitted. “We start the game well, go two-nil up only to concede a goal out of nothing and then a calamitous goal from us. It’s not on Josh he’s a young player it’s down to the senior players to do something about it. It’s made a dent in where we want to get to, for lack of a better saying we’ve bottled it as a group of players we haven’t done enough to win the two games.

“It’s not a mentality issue, a lot of the dressing room has been promoted from this level at the club so they’ve done it before. I don’t think it’s a lack of effort, I think fans see we’re fighting for every ball, running hard, giving our all, it’s just silly mistakes and people not playing to the level we know.

"We’re trying our best but trying hard is not good enough playing for a team like this, we need to play better individually and if we do that then amazingly we still have an opportunity to do something this season – which feels unjust really after the last couple of games. But we know it’s not dead and buried, if we can put a run together like we’ve shown this season then anything can happen."