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West Brom boss Slaven Bilic: Positives to take from Blues draw

Slaven Bilic admitted he was disappointed with the result following Albion goalless draw against Blues - but the boss still felt there were plenty of positives from his team’s display.

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Slaven Bilic (AMA)

Following a three month break due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Baggies resumed their push for the Premier League against Pep Clotet’s side at The Hawthorns.

Albion dominated proceedings from the first whistle to the last - but they struggled to create clear cut chances against a Blues side that defended well.

Bilic, though, was largely pleased with his team’s display - with the head coach believing a bit of match sharpness is all that was missing.

“I am not happy with the result - I am disappointed with the result,” the Croatian said.

“I think we deserved to win - we did enough to win to be fair.

“We needed a bit of luck but more than that - you have to be good enough in the final third.

“The number of shots we had and the number of crosses we had was extremely high.

“For me, the defensive shape, the mentality, the passing in the game, getting into dangerous “areas - we did that more than enough. It was just that final pass.

“That comes down to sharpness. That is what you need matches for - to get match sharp.

“That is the only thing I am not happy about. Everything else was there.

“THere were a lot of positive things. Our shape, winning second balls, building up. Getting “into good positions. Good crosses.

“But in the box we were always not quite in the right position. That is all that missing today.”

Albion shone in a 4-3-3 system prior to the pandemic.

But Bilic reverted to the 4-2-3-1 system used in the first four months of the campaign for the visit of Blues.

“You want your best players in their best positions,” the boss said when asked why he opted to change system.

“Okay we did well in 4-3-3.

“But we have some players back now and this look to me a little bit better.

“Nobody knows now how we would look in 4-3-3 now.

“But we felt that was the best way to go for Birmingham.”

With a wealth of talent at his disposal, Bilic had to leave out Conor Townsend, Lee Peltier, Kamil Grosicki, Gareth Barry and Chris Brunt from his matchday squad.

“I spoke with every player that wasn’t in the squad,” he added.

“It was a tough decision.

“Even though you have got more players on the bench, we wanted to have a few more attacking options and we had a couple of defenders on the bench with Dara (Dara O’Shea) and Barts (Kyle Bartley) and we had a couple of midfielders and we wanted a couple of strikers on the bench,

“There was no room for Conor, for Kamil and no room for Gareth, Chris and Peltier.”