James Morrison has described Wednesday night's tremendous 1-0 triumph at Derby County as one of the proudest moments in his Albion career.
His Baggies side went 1-0 up after just 16 minutes when Aune Heggebø turned JJ Morgan’s cross in at the near post, but went on to have debutant Brayann Pereira sent off for two bookable offences in the 34th minute.
Despite having to play for two thirds of the encounter with one man less, the visitors stood strong and prevented the Rams from scoring an equaliser through sheer belief and togetherness, as well as an incredible amount of bravery in defence.
Morrison insisted the players “deserve every bit of credit” and says they “gave everything” for the badge on their chest.
He said: “That victory ranks very highly with some of my proudest moments at Albion. It’s right up there.
“Those performances are massive in terms of the grit and what we’re all about and what this club represents. The players deserve every bit of credit coming their way, the only unfortunate thing is that we’ve got another game coming up very quickly.
“We’ll enjoy the moment and then we’ll have to move on quickly, but I’m sure the fans saw the players giving everything for the club tonight.
“To get through a game like that in that type of situation takes the highest level of mentality. That’s what I’ve been asking of the players, to show that mental strength. We had to be stronger today. We won on Saturday so the expectation was up again, but, that performance is right up there for me.
“It’s really good for Aune Heggebø to score the winner. He’s had a tough couple of weeks and I still think he’s getting over that illness. We’ve seen that move time and time again, him getting across that front post. It was the only time we strung a few passes together in the whole game really.
“We caused ourselves a few problems because we weren’t clean with the ball. Derby came out the traps and put us under a lot of pressure. The sending off changes the outcome, but we had to get to half time and regroup.
“We then went about the game in 15-minute spells, trying to get through them. The crowd started to get frustrated and we defended the box really well. We got plenty of blocks in too.
“The physical effort the players put in was outstanding. They got across the pitch and out to the channels so well to block the crosses from coming in. The clean sheet was bang on.
“We knew we would be under pressure, but I didn’t want us to be under too much pressure. I wanted us to have some spells with the ball in that second period.
“The defensive structure won us the game tonight. We were confident in our structure of letting the centre backs have the ball, defending the wide areas and defending the box. We wanted to try and counter when we had it and we tried to do that. As time went on our belief grew and the fans came with us. They saw the lads giving everything.
“I told the lads at half time that we had to enjoy the ball coming into our box, defending the box and working for each other. There was so much of that on show.
“Those scenes at the end of the game with the supporters, the players deserve that. They should’ve lapped it up. I don’t think they truly understand what they’ve done tonight, the lads. We’ve got to go again now on Saturday.”
