West Brom: The secret of our success - Di Matteo

Oct 21 2010 by Christopher Lepkowski, Birmingham Mail

ROBERTO Di Matteo claims West Brom perseverance has been critical to their early-season form.

The Baggies welcome Fulham, who lost their first game of the season to Spurs last weekend, to The Hawthorns on Saturday.

The London club have drawn six of their opening eight games, but perhaps the more surprising statistical quirks are that of Albion’s current run.

Di Matteo’s team have come from at least one goal down in five of their last six games.

And, perhaps even more surprisingly, their last 11 goals have come during the second half of games – with Chris Brunt’s 41st-minute strike against Spurs being their earliest and only first-half league goal so far.

Di Matteo believes the nature of the Premier League means that more fancied teams have often attacked more during the latter 45 minutes, forcing Albion to exploit gaps at the back.

“Certainly at home I would suggest that in the second half teams take a few more risks if the game is still at 0-0 or they are 1-0 down,” he said.

“They might take some more chances and the game might open up a bit, whereas normally they are quite compact in the first half and it’s difficult to break them down.

“We believe that fitness-wise we are in good shape at the moment and we were last year.

“Last year we won a lot of points in the last 15 minutes of games.