Break did us the power of good
Albion head coach Graham Potter admitted the last international break arrived at just the right time.
Albion were on a terrible run of form and had lost seven Premier League matches on the spin.
The break allowed Albion to re energise and they have since recorded away victories at Arsenal and Tottenham, plus a home draw against Norwich.
Potter said: “We were suffering up to the international break for different reasons.
“As I said, we played Manchester United and were 0-0 at half-time, going quite well and then we lose our centre back to a red card and then Adam [Webster] gets injured as well.
“So both of those are away. A poor performance against Burnley and then all of sudden it can take you a little bit of time. Then you play Newcastle away who were going through a really good spell - Eddie Howe was manager the month at that point. Then you play Liverpool and Tottenham and pretty quickly it becomes the end of the world.
“And you suffer. And then you have to sort of dig in and find a way. Thankfully the international break gave us that time just to reset a little bit, which we think we used well.
“The guys that went off with their national teams had good experiences and the ones that were working here worked fantastically well.
“So that enabled us I think to perform well against Norwich, even though we didn’t win. As I keep saying, it’s probably the most dominant performance we’ve had in the Premier League since I’ve been here.
“And even though we didn’t win it gave us a bit of confidence and a bit of belief to sort of move forward and probably that helped us get the results we did against Arsenal and Spurs.”
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