Club News

McAuley homes in on ultimate target

And defender says feel-good factor is back at The Hawthorns

GARETH McAuley believes Albion’s ultimate aim this season is firmly back in their sights following their sensational Anfield win.

The Baggies completed the league double over the Reds for the first time for 46 years thanks to Monday’s 2-0 victory.

And the towering defender says Monday’s 2-0 victory has given Steve Clarke’s men renewed belief they can achieve their target of surpassing last season’s 47-point haul and the club’s best-ever Barclays Premier League finish of tenth.

“It’s still the same targets we’ve had from the beginning of the season, which were to finish higher than we did last year and with more points than we did last year,” said McAuley.

“That’s the focus. We’ve got 12 games left and we need to win as many of those as we can.

“Liverpool is a fantastic club with a great history so to take six points off them this season is fantastic.

“We needed to get the feel-good factor going again.

“There has been a lot of things being talked about and we wanted to get a result and start talking about football again.

“We needed to move on and draw a line under everything.

“We’ve got the lads back on the park again, fit, and hopefully we can go out and pick up some results now.”

McAuley also hopes the Baggies can build on their first clean sheet in nine league games.

“We defended well from the front and we knew we had to do that, but whenever anything got past, Fozzie was sensational.

“He was flying about, saving everything, the penalty save changed the game and gave us that belief we could go on and win.”