WE WON IT FOR SIMON – BAGGIES
Shan’s tribute to club sec
WEST Brom caretaker boss Jimmy Shan dedicated the hardfought win over Brentford to club secretary Simon Carrington who died this week.
Kyle Edwards’ debut goal proved the match-winner at a windswept Griffin Park, but Shan’s thoughts were very much with the popular figure around The Hawthorns, who died in midweek after a fight with cancer.
“He was looking down on us today so that performance and victory was for him. He was a fantastic human being and very popular around the training ground, so it’s been a very sad couple of days,” he said.
“That’s two wins in four and no goals conceded, so I’m very pleased with that. If you have the bedrock of clean sheets you always give yourself a chance against a very good footballing team like Brentford.”
Shan was delighted to see Edwards, one of his rising stars in the youth set-up, make his breakthrough. The youngster skipped past four Bees challenges on a surge into the box to clip the ball over keeper Luke Daniels for the winner six minutes after the break.
“I have a lot of faith and trust in Kyle and have watched performances like that at every age group and he’s a talented boy. His goal was a special moment for him and it was a special, special goal,” he said.
“You always think they have the potential to do that but until they set foot on the pitch at this level you don’t know.”
Shan was pleased with the way his side mastered the conis ditions after a tricky first half: “I was delighted we came in goalless. I told them not to underestimate the power of the conditions today and what a momentum builder that is.”
Shan said he has no idea of the time frame regarding a new manager, but added: “I have done what I was asked to do. The board are speaking to two or three people and I know I’ll go back to being firstteam coach.”
Frustrated Brentford head coach Thomas Frank took a thinly veiled swipe at West Brom’s tactics. The Baggies’ game management and the reluctance of referee Andrew Madley to stop it incensed the home crowd as the Bees’ seven-game home winning run came to an end.
Dwight Gayle was the focus of much of their anger, with the Bees claiming he was diving to try and win free-kicks. And they were furious when Madley played just four minutes of added time.
Frank said: “Every football club decides what kind of football they want to play and that up to them. There are many ways to go to the top and the way they played showed they have a lot of respect for us.
“We need to be able to handle teams that want to delay and slow the game down better. It happens every week, but we need to look behind the result. First half we dominated and created opportunities but we should have got more out of them and the strong wind.
“We then made it difficult for ourselves and maybe didn’t take the good counter attacking chances we had.”