Club News

Gardner calls for Albion to pick themselves up

Baggies now face two-week international break

CRAIG Gardner has urged Albion to dust themselves down and respond in the right manner as they look to bounce back from Saturday’s disappointing 3-0 defeat at Swansea. 

The Baggies were denied an opening-day victory by Sunderland’s late leveller before claiming a solid point away at Southampton.

But in their third match of the new Barclays Premier League season, Albion came off second best as they were undone by a Swans side who sit joint-top of the table with a maximum nine points. 

Speaking after Saturday’s reverse at the Liberty Stadium, Gardner said: “Everyone in the changing room is disappointed. 

“We’ve had a good start to the season and we went to Swansea and got beat 3-0.

“But we’ve got to pick ourselves up now and go again. 

“We’re all in it together, there’s no ‘I’ in team, there are no individuals, we’re all a team and we have to respond as a team.

“I just want to say thanks to the fans for travelling and supporting us and singing for us, we want to put it right for them and go forward.”

Gardner added: “It’s not the end of the season, it’s not over, and we have to build and move forward.”

Alan Irvine’s side now face a two-week international break before their next fixture at home to Everton on Saturday, September 13.

It provides a good opportunity for a host of recent signings to get much-needed fitness under their belts – whether at Albion’s training ground or with their respective international teams.

Irvine has already admitted that 11th summer signing Sebastian Blanco will be among a group of players going through a mini pre-season this week, while others will get the ideal chance to up their fitness after injury.

And midfielder Gardner, Albion’s first summer addition back in May, believes the break has come at a beneficial time.

“It’s good for the players we’ve brought in, we’re trying to click,” he said.

“It’s happening slowly every day and now we’ve got a good ten or 12 days to work together, especially the new lads, and build on the performance.

“It’s still the start of the season, we’ve brought in 11 players and we’re still getting to know each other.

“But you can’t do that for a long part of the season. We need to move forward and put that behind us.

“In the season you do get bad performances but you also get really good performances and I think we put two of those in in the first two games of the season and were unlucky not to get better results.

“But we put in a bad performance on Saturday but we have to move on now to Everton at home.”