Centre-back Jonas Olsson has claimed Sunday’s Black Country derby was just a taste of Roy Hodgson’s defensive blueprint for Albion.

The Sweden international believes the Baggies will continue to tighten up in the weeks ahead, after showing encouraging signs of added defensive strength during the 1-1 draw with Wolves.

The Baggies have not kept a clean sheet for 25 Premier League matches, but Sunday was the first time in 11 league games that they have conceded less than twice.

Olsson said: “Three or four sessions was not enough time to get everything sorted as the new gaffer wants to, but I think we looked quite solid and didn’t concede a lot of chances.

“I felt comfortable and that’s what we need to do to stay in this league. We need to get the shape and organisation going because we have shown everyone in this league that, with the ball, we are a decent team.

“If we can get the defence and organisation right we have a good chance of staying up. It has been a long time and I felt we maybe deserved a clean sheet.

“We defended well and they had one chance. We just switched off a little bit at the goal but it was a good finish by them and hopefully we can get that clean sheet for the next game. We need to be solid and organised shape-wise, like we did in big parts of the game on Sunday.

“We know we have the qualities to score and we have match-winners in our team and, if we can stop the ball going in our own net, then we have a really good chance of winning games.”

Paul Scharner yesterday set the Baggies a minimum target of four wins to avoid relegation, but Olsson is reluctant to look beyond next Monday’s trip to Stoke.

He explained: “Paul said four or five? That would be 15 points and if you don’t stay up with 42 points you would be pretty unlucky. But I don’t like counting points.

“If it’s 35, 40 or 45 points needed I don’t really care. It’s a cliche but we have to take every game and not look at trying to get to 40 points because it’s different each year.

“We are above the bottom three now and if we can just keep that distance it won’t matter if we’re on 35 points, 40 or whatever.”