James Morrison shocked by Darren Moore sacking but says modern players used to managerial changes

Morrison, who has played under nine different head coaches at The Hawthorns, says the modern-day player is used to managerial changes.

And he reckons automatic promotion is still possible, provided Albion win all their remaining games.

“I think everybody was shocked,” said Morrison, when asked about Moore’s sacking . “Didn’t see it coming, but the board made a decision and that’s up to them.

“All we can do is concentrate getting on the pitch and doing what we do.

“We’ve all been in this game long enough where managers change quite frequently now.

“You’ve just got to try and impress, come into training each day and do your job, and when you get your chance you’ve got to take it.

“Our squad is quite big, we’re all fighting for our place which is good, to have competition. Whoever comes in, we’ve got to all make our marks.”

Morrison was reinstated into the line-up for Saturday’s 1-0 win over Brentford by caretaker boss James Shan. It was his first start since New Year’s Day.

“I haven’t played for a while but I’ve been training well,” he said. “The squad’s quite big and there’s a lot of midfielders.

“I know I had to be patient and when my chance came I knew I had to be ready.

“Jimmy knows the club inside out, he kept it as usual. We’ve got a good professional group here, we all did our part to help out. He made it easy for us to play.”

Albion have kept back-to-back clean sheets under Shan, who played a more pragmatic 4-5-1 system in his two games.

“We’re all used to being solid,” said Morrison. “That’s what you build success on, being hard to beat, clean sheets. We’ll always get chances and score goals in this team, that’s what we’ve done the last two games.

“We’ve been through a sticky patch, it’s how you come out the other side. We spoke about reacting and making it a positive week, the lads rallied together and did their jobs.”

Victory shaved the gap to the top two down to seven points, and Morrison reckons Albion could still affect the automatic promotion race, as long as they win every one of their remaining games.

“You’ve seen in this league anyone can drop points at any time,” he said. “But we’ve got to just concentrate on us really and not look at anyone else.

“If we can win every game, we’ll be up there. Just being realistic, Leeds (and Sheffield United) have to drop three games. We’ve got to win our games and hope for the best.”