No away fear for Albion

Albion headed for Charlton this afternoon with manager Tony Mowbray adamant his players should not fear playing away from home.

The Baggies face playing six of their final nine matches on the road, starting with this afternoon’s televised clash at The Valley.

But Mowbray insisted a shortage of home fixtures should not damage his team’s hopes of automatic promotion.

“We have a fantastic opportunity to finish in the top two,” said Mowbray, whose side are six points off the top of the Championship with two games in hand.

“We’ve won the last three games away from The Hawthorns and scored 11 goals so why fear away games?

“We won’t have any fear about playing away games.

“If we finish third, fourth or fifth, we’ll be positive we can win the play-offs.

“But the only thought I have at the moment is being very positive. If we win our games in hand we know we can go top.”

Mowbray admitted, however, that the task of picking up points in the race for the Premier League is getting harder as the end of the season approaches.

And he predicted that the league table will remain tight for the remainder of the campaign.

“The teams who are 11th or 12th are probably thinking ‘fantastic’ and their fans will be full of enthusiasm, because if they win the next two games they’ll be touching the play-offs,” said Mowbray.

“It does create that extra intensity to every game.

“Unless you have that little extra bit of quality, which no-one has this year, to be that much better then you are going to be in the situation we are in now.

“There are 12 or more teams all thinking they can still have a real chance.

“That’s the league we’re in. There isn’t anyone with a huge gulf of class.”