Frank Lampard notes specific West Brom quality Coventry City can aspire to

The Baggies kept the Sky Blues at bay - though the visitors had more of the clear-cut chances and expected goals (xG) to record a 2-0 victory at The Hawthorns for a first home win since September 21 and a 10th clean sheet in 20 Championship games.

For former Chelsea and England star Lampard it was a first Coventry defeat at the third time of asking, with City left down in 16th.

Alex Mowatt netted via a deflection early on and Albion had to wait until 16 minutes from time for a fine Karlan Grant second to seal the victory. Coventry were a big threat before Grant made it two and had troubled Alex Palmer's goal at the beginning and end of the first period, but the visitors were denied by Carlos Corberan's side.

Lampard sees Albion's qualities as their strength, organisation and robustness and suggested his team could learn something from those attributes.

"They’re a strong team and a well-drilled outfit, a physically strong team," Lampard told the Express & Star. "It’s important in this league to be based on that. It’s something we have to improve ourselves. 

"They create problems because of the way they play with good possession and they get a lot of people up against your back line. Sometimes they can try and push you back but we dealt with it pretty well. 

"A strong team that’ve been working together (for a long period of time). Although it’s been a funny period for them, they’ve been robust and they don’t lose games. It’s a big strength that we need to start working towards as well, so there are some things to take from our point of view and we respect them as a strong team in the league."

Expected goals (xG), the metric used to detail the quality of chances on goal, had Coventry up at 2.24 goals to Albion's paltry 0.47, a rarity for a 2-0 scoreline in favour of the other side.

Corberan admitted his side lost saw of their intent and ability to attack after Mowatt's 11th-minute opener.

The Spaniard explained: "Yes me too (it was surprising to see Albion heavily down on the expected goals xG stat) especially because I find that we had the possibilities to control and to create chances.

"I think in the first half after we scored the goal we lost the middle of the pitch and didn’t have enough players to give continuity to attacks.

"We were losing balls wide and open for them to counter-attack and they were creating problems on our left side to defend because they were attacking well on their right side. We didn’t manage it well there. Some aspects of defending gave them the possibility to take crosses, especially from our left side of the team in defence.

"At half time I decided to change Josh Maja because we needed to have one number 10 (John Swift) in my opinion being more as a midfielder than as a striker. Because if you lose the control of the ball in the game, you cannot win the games. 

"We put in the pitch the necessary energy to compete. They will play on Saturday, we played on Sunday, I knew with the passing of the minutes the team could have good control of the energy. For me, the changes helped to keep the energy standards you have to compete in the game."