‘Everyone’s down’ – Sam Johnstone makes West Brom admission after defeat v Fulham
West Brom goalkeeper Sam Johnstone admits that the Baggies’ performance against Fulham “wasn’t good enough”, claiming that the team need to “put things right as soon as possible”.
Fulham won the crucial clash 2-0, earning their first three points of the season and leaving West Brom in the relegation zone in the process.
The Baggies struggled at the back and in attack throughout the match, managing just one shot on target against a side that had conceded 14 goals in its opening six Premier League encounters.
Speaking after the match, Johnstone said that they would now have to rebuild any momentum they had established.
“We’re very frustrated and it wasn’t good enough,” he told the club’s official website.
“The last few games we’ve played well, built momentum and we were looking to carry it into this game. We didn’t and we’ll be looking to put things right as soon as possible. It’s the Premier League and we knew it was going to be tough.
“Everyone’s down and the boss wasn’t happy, we weren’t happy and the fans won’t be so we need to put things right and start building that momentum again.”
Disastrous performance
In a match against one of the Baggies’ direct relegation rivals, this was about as poor a performance as they could have delivered.
Over the 90 minutes, Fulham had 13 shots to West Brom’s 10 and generated 1.6 expected goals to the away side’s 0.5. Renowned for their wing talent, Slaven Bilic’s team completed just nine dribbles in the entire match and just five passes into the penalty box (via FBRef).
Matheus Pereira, who started on the right rather than in the centre once again, was hooked off after 55 minutes, while the man playing in his preferred role, creative midfielder Conor Gallagher, completed just 65.8% of his passes (via FBRef).
Seven matches into the season and West Brom sit 18th in the table with three points taken so far. The pressure will soon start to mount on Bilic unless results turn around, and some of the decisions he made on Monday will not have helped his case.
In other West Brom news, ‘We are not there’ – Bilic bristles at pundit predictions for West Brom