Kyle Bartley says Albion must use their strong second-half showing from Saturday’s defeat to Southampton as motivation to bounce back after the international break.
The defender capitalised on a much-improved Baggies display after the break to level the scores, and despite Darnell Furlong rattling the crossbar minutes later, Adam Armstrong’s strike halted the visitors’ momentum to keep the points at St Mary’s.
However, centre-back Bartley believes his team-mates’ performance on the south coast only strengthens belief in Albion’s capabilities this season, and stressed their desire to produce another run of results when they return after the November international window.
Bartley said: “We had a difficult start to the game but we were grew into it and there were periods in that second half which I thought we dominated.
“We should’ve taken more of our opportunities but at the end of the day, we didn’t defend our box well enough for that second goal and we got punished.
“It’s something we’ve got to learn from but the general feeling is that the performance was really good.
“We can use that frustration and disappointment from losing the game. We need to come back in a couple of weeks and, hopefully, those things will fuel us to get a really good result.
“The belief has always been there. I believe in all the players, myself, the manager, club, and that was a performance to really show people that, but we need to use it as motivation to really kick on from this.
“It means the world to us [fans applauding the team off].
“The away fans have been absolutely outstanding ever since I came here and if we perform badly, they’ll let us know and today, even though the result wasn’t what we wanted, they all stayed till the end.
“They clapped us off, we clapped them and that togetherness is going to be really important if we’re going to achieve our goals this season.
“We’re probably where we deserve to be. We’ve managed to get things going and we’ve had some big injuries to some key players who will hopefully come back after the international window.
“It’s just time to kick on from there and really string together some results.”
