Head coach seeks cutting edge in attack
ALAN Irvine firmly believes Albion will hit the right formula sooner rather than later as they strive to register their first Barclays Premier League victory of the season.
The Baggies travel to north London on Sunday to face Tottenham at White Hart Lane (ko 1.30pm).
Irvine’s side were denied an opening-day victory by Sunderland’s late leveller before claiming a solid and creditable point at Southampton.
However, individual errors away at Swansea and at home to Everton have seen Albion taste back-to-back defeats.
But Irvine is confident his charges will soon get the three points which could well kickstart their campaign.
“I believe we will get this right. The players are great to work with, it’s a pleasure working with them on a day-to-day basis,” the Scot said.
“They’re very open to the work we’re doing on the training ground.
“And I feel really confident that with the group of players we’ve got here and with the work we do, that we’ll get good results.
“People will be looking to see if there are any problems in the camp but there really aren’t. The criticism is just part of the job.”
Saido Berahino’s opening-day brace against the Black Cats almost heralded three points.
Yet since then Albion have not found the net in their three subsequent league fixtures, which included a dominant hour-long spell against Everton last weekend.
And Irvine is well aware that his side need to add a killer instinct to their game.
“Clearly we need our creative players to create more and our strikers to score more, we need to be more creative in the final third,” he said.
“The stats against Everton all pointed to us being the dominant side but I think the biggest problem is we’ve made some individual errors which have proved to be extremely costly, as they will at this level.
“But we got in more shots, more crosses and got into the final third more often. But we need to be more creative.
“We got into good positions a lot but didn’t look like scoring against Everton and we need to do better there.”