WEST Bromwich Albion manager Tony Mowbray says the squad he has inherited has top six credentials – but desperately needs to find some consistency.
Albion suffered their first home defeat in five months as play-off rivals Blackburn Rovers earned a 2-0 win at The Hawthorns on Wednesday.
Baggies, missing the suspended Kyle Bartley, had two goals disallowed in between Rovers striker Makhtar Gueye scoring twice.
Albion are still in the top six ahead of Saturday’s trip to Millwall – but Mowbray knows he has entered the business end of the season.
He says that every game is crucial now – and there is little room for error as Baggies aim to hold on to their play-off ambitions.
Since coming in last month, Mowbray has recorded two wins and three defeats.
And while admitting his team struggled to break down former club Blackburn, the Albion boss says he likes what he has seen so far.
Mowbray said: “I like the squad, I like the players. I like the team, I think there’s good options.
“Maybe if Bartley had played, they wouldn’t have scored the first goal, in my opinion.
“But, and I did feel, even though there was not a lot in the game, we were dominating the first half. I’m not sure they would have scored.
“I said to the players, if it finished 0-0, and we don’t get through this block, take the point, put it in the bag.
“So a defeat hurts a lot, and because we’re trying to build momentum.
“We were desperate to try and get back-to-back wins and create a little gap, but it all closes up again. It feels that, when the wheel stops turning at the start of May, you’ve got to be on a good run.
“You’ve got to have won a couple in a row, and you’ve got to find his find yourself in the top six. I know when I was at Sunderland, we relied on other teams’ results. And we sneaked into the playoffs.
“So you feel, it’s going to be one of them. Lots of teams feel as if they’ve got a chance. You if you don’t win games, you won’t get there. You’ve got to get up to 70 points and just over maybe.
“We have to find a way from 14 games to win half of them. You’ll get up to 70 points and you give yourself a chance.
“Now we’re coming into the most important bit of it. Every game is pretty crucial. Blackburn was crucial because, from a good position, we were trying to consolidate that and create a little gap where somewhere along the line you can lose a game that you don’t deserve to lose.
“We’re trying to find consistency. We’re trying to find the players that can do the job, and I do think we’ve got a good squad.”
But Mowbray revealed that Blackburn losing manager John Eustace to Derby County did not help Albion.
The Baggies manager said: “ I spoke to Danny Batth and he said all the players were galvanised for this game.
“He sensed it in the dressing room before the game after the adversity of what they’d been through this week.
“The players were together because of all the talk on all the major channels.
“You could see it that they worked really hard here.”
