West Brom suffered another 2-1 defeat today, losing at Sunderland in a similar vein to last weekend.
Last Saturday, West Brom hosted league leaders Leicester City and lost 2-1.
The Baggies looked to set to claim an impressive but went for all three, and left themselves exposed when Leicester cleared a corner, bursting up the pitch to score an injury time winner.
A draw would’ve been a good result and a draw would’ve been a decent outcome against a managerless Sunderland side too.
But the Black Cats ran out as 2-1 winners, with Brandon Thomas-Asante scoring the Baggies’ only goal of the game.
West Brom beaten on the counter again
Thomas-Asante’s goal came after Sunderland went two goals in front.
After an eventful first half, Dan Ballard headed Sunderland in front, with Dan Neil adding the second soon after.
And Neil’s goal came in a similar vein to what Harry Winks’ winner did last weekend; Sunderland cleared a corner and broke on the counter-attack, with West Brom finding themselves somewhat short at the back.
Admittedly, it wasn’t as dire as that Leicester winner, with a Conor Townsend’s slip allowing for Alex Pritchard to play Neil through, but it’s another point lost to a counter-attacking goal stemming from a West Brom corner.
How does Carlos Corberan fix the issue?
It’s simple enough to say, ‘leave more players at the back when going up for a corner’, but West Brom did that today and were still exposed.
It could be a case of lacking pace at the back or playing too high, but the latter seems to be the case with West Brom having their share of pace in the defensive line.
Carlos Corberan favours the high press and pushing his defenders back when the ball is high up the pitch could leave a void in the middle of the park.
West Brom operate in a very fluid 4-2-3-1 formation and have done for a while, and it’s easy to forget that West Brom have been in good form over the past few weeks, so whether a dramatic change is needed to fix the issues is up for debate.
So there might not be an easy fix to this emerging West Brom issue, but make no doubt that Corberan and his team will be working on a fix.
Today’s performance was one of the Baggies’ worst of the season and it’s given Corberan plenty of food for thought ahead of a Tuesday night clash vs Rotherham United next week.