Bosses see penalty rather differently

Rival bosses Paulo Sousa and Roberto Di Matteo had opposing views of Albion's crucial penalty with the Swansea boss accusing Giles Barnes of taking a dive.

Sousa claimed Barnes had dived to win the Baggies their late spot-kick but Di Matteo leapt to Barnes's defence, claiming it was clear penalty.

Sousa said: "From my line of view, I thought the referee was going to give a yellow card to the player because he dived. After seeing it from different angles, I'm right.

"The referee saw it differently, but it's something we are used to.

"It's the first time I've gone into the referee's room after a game. We spoke like adults, but it didn't make any difference.

"I've spoken so many times about the referees and decisions and I have my point of view about these things.

"Perhaps as a club we will consider sending a DVD of all the incidents over the season to the English FA and Uefa. We'll think about it."

But Di Matteo insisted: "It was a clear penalty. There's no discussion about it. Giles put the ball past the defender and the defender put out a leg and brought him down.

"If Swansea are upset there is nothing I can do about that."

The pair did agree, however, that last night's result had killed off Swansea's hopes of claiming an automatic promotion place, leaving Nottingham Forest as Albion's only challengers.

Sousa said: "We never talked about automatic promotion. All the talk was from the media and our results kept that talk going.

"But that's over now."

And Di Matteo added: "It will be tough for them now but they're still in a great position and I'm pretty sure they'll make the play-offs."

Di Matteo, meanwhile, paid tribute to the maturity of his side's performance after they became only the third visiting side this season to score more than once at the Liberty Stadium.

The Italian said: "It was a very mature performance. We didn't give much away and took our chances when they came along.

"If we don't concede, we've always got a chance of winning games as we've scored in every match in 2010.

"It was a great result as Swansea is a difficult place to play.

"The most important thing for us was getting something out of the game but we're very pleased we managed to win.

"The game more or less went the way I thought it would. Swansea don't concede many goals but, on the other hand, they don't score many either, so we knew there wouldn't be many chances.

"We knew we had to stay in the game for as long as possible because we knew we will always create chances.

"The 0-0 scoreline was good and, the longer the game went on with that scoreline, the more I thought our chances of winning would increase."

Sousa added: "We started really well. We dominated and put them under a lot of pressure.

"In the second-half they changed their team and brought on power and explosion up front which created us a lot of difficulties.

"They closed a lot of our space down and the game became more balanced. It looked like ending 0-0 until the penalty incident.

"But we need to be strong now for the rest of the season and we can't afford to look back on all these decisions going against us.''