Interviews

Conor Townsend | We’re disappointed but it’s far from over

An image of Conor Townsend being interviewed

Conor Townsend insisted Albion’s dressing room is still full of belief despite Sunday’s setback against Sunderland.

The Baggies were beaten 1-2 by Tony Mowbray’s side at The Hawthorns on the weekend in their first home defeat for close to six months.

But, while acknowledging that the squad were gutted to lose the Sky Bet Championship clash, the left-back believes proceedings are “far from over” with three big matches still to play.

“It’s obviously disappointing to lose the game,” said Conor.

“In the first half I thought Sunderland were the better team, and we came in 1-0 up. Then in the second half we were probably the better team - we had a lot of chances.

“Being 1-0 up and then losing the game is obviously disappointing at this stage of the season, but we’re still right in it. We’ve all had a chat in there, we’ve got to get over the disappointment of today. That’s the challenge.

“We’ve got our game in hand on Wednesday when we go to Sheffield United. It’s a massive game, and we’ve got to try and pick ourselves up and go again. We all think it’s far from over.

“It was a little bit end-to-end at times. Sunderland are a good team, but so are we. The second half was a bit of a ding-dong, they were attacking and we were attacking.

“The main thing from the second half is that they’ve taken their chances and we haven’t. We’ve had a couple that we should be putting away, myself included. The big moments in the game have gone against us today but we’ve got to dust ourselves down and go again.

“At 1-1 you can see both teams want to win the game. At this stage of the season we really wanted to win it, we were going forward and maybe we got caught a little bit trying to get that goal.

“They’ve scored in the last minute but it just shows it’s never over. Even now going into the next three games we’ve got a right chance of being in there. That’s what we’ve got to try and do.

“We know what we need to do. We need to win a couple of games and give ourselves the best possible chance, starting Wednesday.

“There’s no point feeling sorry for ourselves. If the defeat had put us out of the picture it’s a different story.

“Having the fans behind us like they were, even at the end when we’ve been beaten they were clapping us off.

“I think they can appreciate the effort we’ve put in today. We’ve given it everything, come up short, but we’re going to need them for the final three games because it does lift the players.”