Steve Bruce: West Brom need to be ‘better defensively’ after tweaking teams approach
Steve Bruce has revealed a West Brom defensive tactic change that helped address the team’s issues at the back against Norwich on Saturday.
The Baggies were defensively sound on a whole at the weekend and would have kept a clean sheet if it wasn’t for an unfortunate second-half deflection.
Bruce changed Albion’s system for the game, allowing Norwich to have more of the ball, changing from the usual 4-2-3-1 to a 4-3-3 and 4-5-1.
Speaking to the Express and Star, Bruce spoke of the team’s need to improve defensively and how the change of system helped them to achieve this.
“We have to be better defensively and I decided that (the system) was the way we were going to go.
“It was quite refreshing that we were 1-0 up instead of 1-0 down after 10 minutes because we’ve done that six times out of nine matches leading up to Saturday. You’ve got to get the balance right between attack and defence and we were much more solid (at Norwich).
“Maybe changing us helped that,”
Experience.
Albion’s new experience at the back will undoubtedly help their defensive fortunes moving forward; even more so if Bruce continues with these new tactics.
Erik Pieters showed he is more than capable of coming in and doing a job for the Baggies being hailed as “classy” by Bruce.
Pieters can be versatile for Bruce’s backline too; the defender is able to play at centre-back as well as left-back, something that is a priceless attribute to have.
Things are looking up for the Albion and despite still lingering above the drop, Saturday’s defensive display needed to be seen by the fans to provide some hope that they can turn things around.
With just one clean sheet in 10 Championship games this campaign, it was pretty clear as to where Bruce’s side have been going wrong.
And despite West Brom being near the bottom, they are in the top six for goals scored in the league; let’s hope these defensive tactical changes are here to stay.
In other West Brom news, Albion are struggling to sell tickets for this weekend’s match.