Slaven Bilic: More shots is the key to West Brom success
Slaven Bilic believes getting more shots on goal is a key reason why Albion have turned around their form in the Championship.
Having previously gone seven league games without a win, the Baggies secured their third successive victory at Reading last night - with goals from Matheus Pereira and Kyle Bartley securing a 2-1 victory.
For more than an hour at the Madejski Stadium, Bilic's side played some sensational football with Pereira, Filip Krovinovic, Callum Robinson and Hal Robson-Kanu all combining beautifully.
And Bilic believes the desire of those players to have attempts on goal has helped get his side back on track in the race for promotion.
"We are a good team, we have good players, we have patterns, we have energy," the head coach said.
"We are shooting, the last couple of games I don’t know how many shots we have had - more than 50.
"It doesn't matter if it goes over or if it is blocked it doesn’t matter. When you are shooting it creates momentum. It puts a bit of panic in the opponent.
"I am most pleased with that part of the game.
"There was one stage of the season, even when we were winning games, when we didn’t have as many shots.
"But last few games we are like bang, bang, bang. We are not waiting for the ideal situation to have a shot, we are just having a strike. That’s good."
While Albion dominated for the best part of 65 minutes in Berkshire, Reading did put them under pressure during the closing stages.
And Bilic was pleased with the way his team saw out the game.
"To be fair we limited them in the last 20 minutes," the Croatian continued.
"Of course they were rising more.
"But we limited them, it wasn’t like the Alamo.
"We kept them away from our goal. Even in the last 15 minutes, when they had the ball we pressed them really well.
"The only negative is that, after the second-goal, we should have put this game to bed. We had enough chances.
"We weren’t casual or sloppy. We weren’t being over-clever. We wanted to score, we weren’t trying to walk the ball in.
"But some of those shots weren’t good. Some of the shots were unlucky, some were blocked really well.
"But it was a good performance from us."
Reading were gifted the lead in the first-half when Bartley inexplicably handled the ball in the box.
And Bilic admitted he was at a loss to describe his defender's actions.
"He (Bartley) can’t explain that, nobody can explain that," the boss added.
"But for him, it’s good to score the winning goal.
"It shouldn’t happen but it does happen."
