Saturday 13 September 2014 18:03, UK
Alan Irvine admits West Bromwich Albion did themselves few favours as two individual errors condemned them to a 2-0 defeat against Everton.
A poor clearance from Jonas Olsson less than two minutes in presented Romelu Lukaku with an opportunity to curl home a spectacular opener.
West Brom then held their own until the 66th minute when a speculative effort from Kevin Mirallas was allowed to squeeze under the body of England goalkeeper Ben Foster.
Both mistakes can be considered uncharacteristic, but Irvine concedes that they have left his side reflecting on a self-inflicted setback.
He told Sky Sports: “Obviously we got off to the worst possible start. Jonas has tried to clear it, he’s not cleared it properly and it’s a fantastic finish by Romelu Lukaku.
“Then we played really well in the first half. We got into crossing positions time after time, we delivered a lot of crosses into the box, we gave a really good Everton team a tough old time, but it was one of those ones where you don’t want half-time to come.
“Second half we didn’t get out of the blocks as we’d ended the first half. We were probably drawn into the game at that particular time, when unfortunately there was another individual error.
“Both players are obviously extremely disappointed, it’s not normal for them to do that but it happens and we have to deal with that. Now we make sure we do our work on the training ground and make sure we get a better result next time.”
Frustration in the stands threatened to boil over at times, with disgruntled supporters aiming their anger towards the dugout.
Irvine acknowledges that, after a winless four-game opening to the season, that he is in no position to ask for time as he looks to piece together a squad inherited over the summer.
He added: “I’ve actually got no right to tell them that. They all make that decision. All I can do is work as hard as possible on the training ground to bring the group together.
“There is a lot of hard work gone on, the players have been great in terms of the way they have been responding, but we’re making some errors at the moment and we’re getting punished for them.”
While back-to-back defeats in the Premier League will have done little for confidence in the camp, Irvine refuses to buy into the belief that he has a rebuilding job on his hands as he remains convinced that he has the required quality at his disposal to turn things around.
He said: “It’s not a team yet.
“Obviously any big mistakes are going to erode confidence to some extent. But they are a good group of lads, they have been very, very good to work with and there are good characters in the dressing room. I’m sure they will recover from that kind of setback.”
