Mowbray hails stars after title win

Tony Mowbray today hailed his Albion history makers and saluted them for winning the Championship in style.

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The Baggies lifted their first championship trophy in 88 years yesterday after a 2-0 victory at QPR on the final day of the season.

And Mowbray paid tribute to the manner of his players’ achievement of living up to their tag as the division’s great entertainers.

The manager said: “It’s a proud moment. It’s been a long, long season. We’ve come a long, long way from losing at Burnley on the opening day and made a lot of progress. Great credit to this group of players that have come through a season winning more games and scoring more goals than anyone else it the league. They rightly find themselves champions.

“The supporters have been wonderful all season and backed the team even when we were losing a few games.Generally the supporters have enjoyed watching the team.”There is this great debate going on in English football at the moment about whether it’s all about winning or entertaining.

“You’ve got to get a balance and hopefully we have had a balance this year. We’ve probably lost too many games and gone up with 81 points.

“People might argue that shouldn’t be enough to win a Championship. But I think we’ve done it in style. We’ve scored a lot of goals and entertained our supporters.

“That’s the business we should be in and I think that’s why our supporters have stuck with us.

“I’m proud once again that we’ve scored more than 100 goals for two seasons on the trot and entertained along the way.”

Mowbray will open a series of one-to-one meetings with his players this week to discuss their futures in the Premier League.

Securing new contracts for Zoltan Gera and Kevin Phillips will be near the top of his agenda and the manager is also set to offer Martin Albrechtsen a new deal although he is unlikely to break the bank to keep the Dane.

Meanwhile, Mowbray dismissed weekend media reports linking the Baggies with a move for American midfielder Michael Bradley or Dutch outfit Heerenveen.

“I’ll shoot that down now for you,” he said. “It’s not true or correct.”