Boo- boys must give Baggies a break says Billy

BILLY JONES has urged the West Brom boo- boys not to turn on the team despite their winter blip.

The Baggies were booed off by The Hawthorns crowd after their New Year’s Day defeat by Fulham.

Captain Chris Brunt also came in for some stick when his withdrawal in the second half was greeted with ironic cheers.

Although it was a fi fth defeat in eight matches for Albion, they are still in seventh place after a superb start to the season.

And Jones, above, admits he was left puzzled by the treatment of one of the Baggies’ star performers in recent campaigns.

He added: “Brunty’s a great West Brom player, he has been in the past and still is now. He’s a massive part of the starting XI and the squad. I don’t understand why they did that to be honest.

“You can tell that Brunty, the same as a lot of us, misplaced some passes, but the effort was still there. He was challenging and working hard.”

Only the two Manchester clubs have won more Premier League home matches than the Baggies this season and full- back Jones reckons Steve Clarke’s men have become victims of their own success.

He said: “The performances we’ve given in front of the home crowd means they expect us to perform consistently and win games at home where we’ve been strong.

“We expect high standards from ourselves, but against Fulham it wasn’t a good performance.

“But the fans can appreciate the effort was still there. Yes there were misplaced passes and mistimed tackles, but all the lads gave it a right good go.

“You can understand why they get frustrated, but we are even more frustrated than them. We are annoyed because our home form has been so good.

“Fulham have now taken six points off us this season which isn’t very good. We’re disappointed with that.

“We’ll pick up those points though in the second half of the season, maybe like we did last season when we won at Liverpool.”