Carlos Corberan satisfied as upwardly mobile West Brom win again

Posted Sunday, December 18, 2022 by PA

Carlos Corberan was satisfied with West Brom’s fifth successive Sky Bet Championship win as the club continue to look up the table.

The excellent Jed Wallace opened the scoring inside 20 minutes against a Rotherham side who offered desperately little in reply at The Hawthorns.

The home side widened the gap when Grady Diangana finished in the 58th minute and the 3-0 win was completed in the 70th minute when Brandon Thomas-Asante converted the rebound from a penalty he had won.

West Brom are 16th in the table but could make good progress if they win their game in hand, at Coventry, on Wednesday evening.

Corberan, who replaced Steve Bruce at the helm in October, has claimed 15 points from the 18 on offer since his arrival, an extraordinary return for a side who were in the relegation zone when he was appointed.

“We started the game with determination, and we created a chance in the first minutes of the game with the pass of [Daryl] Dike for [Tom] Rogic,” Corberan said.

“After that it was more interrupted, with throw-ins for them and us. There were a lot of set-pieces which didn’t allow the team to find a tempo or intensity that we wanted.

“From minute 15 to minute 35 we showed personality and that was the consequence – the goal that we scored. We were concentrating on trying to perform to the level that this game was demanding.

“The last minutes of the first half we gave the ball to the opponent more than we should. We improved this in the second half.”

The home side, who won at Sunderland on Monday evening, began confidently and it was not long before their wealth of attacking talent was testing Rotherham goalkeeper Viktor Johansson who, despite conceding three goals, did not disgrace himself with a string of decent saves.

Johansson could do little about Wallace’s opener, before Albion cruised to the finish with strikes from substitute Diangana – who plundered with his first touch after coming on – and Thomas-Asante.

Corberan handed starts to Dike and Rogic after their goals set up Monday’s victory on Wearside and pushed John Swift, usually a number 10, back into a deeper role.

“Usually we play with Swift as a number 10 and today we played him deeper,” Corberan explained.

“Rogic is a number 10 and we played them both today a little bit differently because we played with one number six in Okay [Yokuslu], and two 10s – Swift and Rogic, because we thought Swift could adapt in some circumstances to this type of game.”

Rotherham manager Matt Taylor, who saw his team lose 3-1 at home to Bristol City last weekend, bemoaned the ease with which the Millers allowed their hosts to create chances and score goals and demanded an improvement.

He said: “We have given away goals that are uncharacteristic, I said last week that I hope it wouldn’t happen again, and it’s happened again – against a good team, we have to speak about the personnel they have on the pitch.

“The nature of the goals is hard to take and it’s another uphill task. Defensively we have to give ourselves a better chance than that, before we start addressing our in-possession game which, at times, was OK without offering any threat to the opposition box.”