West Bromwich Albion vs Bristol City. Sky Bet Championship.
The HawthornsAttendance25,254.
Report and free match highlights from the Sky Bet Championship match between West Bromwich Albion and Bristol City at The Hawthorns on Saturday | Tom Fellows and Jed Wallace score for Baggies as they bolster position in play-off places.
Saturday 16 March 2024 18:37, UK
West Brom extended their unbeaten Sky Bet Championship run to six matches as they signed off before the final international break of the season with a comfortable 2-0 home victory over Bristol City.
Tom Fellows netted his fifth goal of the year to fire Albion in front in the final minute of the first half, before Jed Wallace doubled the lead in the 50th minute when he routinely tapped in Conor Townsend's cross.
Carlos Corberan's team - without Andreas Weimann, who was ineligible to face his parent club - did not initially settle as well as City.
Cedric Kipre had to be alert to clear his lines after Tommy Conway produced a dangerous centre and West Brom were grateful that Mark Sykes did not do better with the rebound.
Mikey Johnston, who joined Albion on loan from Celtic in January, has six goals in as many league starts and he threatened to add to that tally shortly after the quarter-hour mark when he eased away from yellow shirts and bent a strike from the edge of the area just past Max O'Leary's far post.
The Robins' best opportunity of the opening half came when Anis Mehmeti flicked on a Haydon Roberts hooked clearance and Conway was sent racing clear with Okay Yokuslu for company. The forward shot low but Alex Palmer in the West Brom goal was equal to the effort.
Just as it appeared as though the first half would end goalless, Albion nosed themselves in front.
Winger Johnston again caused problems when cutting in from the left, teeing up Yokuslu, who in turn found Fellows on his right. The winger struck a powerful shot through a crowded area and it beat O'Leary at his near post.
The lead was doubled within five minutes of the restart, with the influential Johnston involved again. He fed left-back Townsend, who picked out the unmarked Wallace and the captain rolled the ball home to give Albion a cushion.
From there, Corberan's outfit, fresh from scoring four at Huddersfield last Sunday, went immediately in search of more.
Yokuslu drove a first-time effort just past the post after O'Leary had denied Johnston and in the final 20 minutes the City goalkeeper was forced into action again when he denied Fellows, who found space on the right hand side.
City boss Liam Manning made a triple substitution which included the introduction of centre-forward Harry Cornick, who posed more of a challenge for opposing centre-halves Kipre and Kyle Bartley.
However, the Robins were wayward when Ross McCrorie and then Sykes were presented with openings, before Gardner-Hickman stung Palmer's gloves.
The visitors could not find a breakthrough and Albion further cemented their place in the play-off places with three points and 16th clean sheet of the season.
West Brom's Carlos Corberan:
"I think that we should have scored the third one, if we were to say it was comfortable. In these types of games, a goal in the last moments can change the feeling.
"We needed to be constant more than patient, to insist on the things that we needed to do.
"When the opponent is defending and being well organised, you need to disorganise them to create the chance. When you start to do that, positive things can happen - but so can mistakes that give opportunities to them.
"In general we managed some moments in attack well, in some moments no. The same in defence.
"There are things that (we) need to do better to be more dominant in the game."
Bristol City's Liam Manning:
"You waste your breath on him [referee Tom Nield] to be honest. I thought the ref was really poor all game, so I don't want to waste my energy talking about him.
"I thought the lads all left it out there. We kept trying to play but we just lacked quality in the final third. We need to keep working and improving on that.
"The big thing today was belief. When you've had a tough time, believing in the work you do…too often when we go behind we don't respond well enough. That's for us to look at but you can see the work that has been done."
