West Bromwich Albion manager Slaven Bilic has picked out Conor Gallagher and Branislav Ivanovic from Monday night’s 2-0 defeat at Fulham. He thinks the pair were his side’s two best performers on a difficult night for the Baggies as they continued their winless start to the season and extended a run of games without a win in the League to 11. Gallagher and Ivanovic were both signed in the summer, the former on loan from Chelsea and the latter a Stamford Bridge legend available on a free transfer.
Slaven Bilic said “I saw tonight a young kid Conor Gallagher and I saw Branislav Ivanovic. A very young guy and an older guy, they had more commitment. That’s not good when you can see two players that are doing more than the others and it looked to me like that and it can’t be the case. This is the League and we are the team that can’t rely on quality only, we have to dig in and work hard like we have done. Especially in the last couple of games, apart from that if we can’t do that we have no chance. I don’t question the commitment…I’ve said it looked really good. I am talking about tonight and what it looked like, we did not have it. We were not good enough.”
Bobby Decordova-Reid and Ola Aina scored in the first half to put Scott Parker’s side 2-0 ahead at half-time. Albion had no reply to the Cottagers and slipped to 18th place with only three points to their name from 21 on offer this season. Fulham, who were winless before tonight’s game, climb up to 17th with Tottenham Hotspur up next for Bilic and his men.
