James Morrison believes there were several positives to take away from their trip to Rotherham United on day one of 2026/27.
The Baggies kicked their campaign off with a convincing 4-1 win at the New York Stadium, with JJ Morgan bagging a brace on his debut and Felix Horn Myhre on target less than ten minutes into his maiden Albion appearance.
Harry Whitwell was also on the scoresheet against the Millers - notching his maiden senior strike for the club.
Nolan Galves and Barney Stewart made their debuts, while Conor Townsend returned to Baggies action after two years away.
The boss was impressed with the majority of the performance, but was left frustrated by the soft goal his team conceded in the dying moments of the tie, saying: "I was very pleased with that showing and I thought we played some great stuff.
"At other times, I thought we were quite sloppy. We got a little bit complacent, but there was a lot of good stuff. There's also lots we can defniately get better at, but we're still building. Overall, there were lots of positives and we'll take that to Norwich.
"It was good for JJ Morgan to continue scoring goals like he has been in pre-season, it was nice for Felix Horn Myhre to get on the pitch and score, it was good for Harry to score, it was also nice to see Mikey play, to get Nolan Galves 90 minutes and to get Barney Stewart on the pitch. I could go on.
"I'm still fuming that we've conceded a goal. My gripe is no clean sheet. We've got to pride ourselves on clean sheets like we did last season.
"It's not just an important thing for me - keeping clean sheets is important for the whole team. They give the goalkeepers confidence and the defenders confidence. They should be just as angry as I am, and i'm sure they will be.
"I've wanted to see us get better with the ball and we managed to play through quite well today. We looked at the structure of the opposition and how we could affect that, which the lads really took on board.
"I was really pleased with the patterns of play. In recent weeks, we've struggled with that final part, but, today, it came together.
"We're taking this competition seriously. It was great to get competing again in a stadium with the fans there. The fans travelled in numbers, so we owed them a big performance and we needed to show them and the tournament respect. We tried to keep going until the end and get our clean sheet, but unfortunately we couldn't do that and that's where we can improve."
