West Brom: Simon Cox would happily settle for a two-horse race for Championship
Nov 23 2009 by Christopher Lepkowski, Birmingham Mail
SIMON Cox would happily settle for a two-horse race for the Championship title – as long as Albion are one of the clubs involved.
The Baggies are back on top of the table after beating Bristol City 4-1 on Saturday, although Newcastle will return to the summit if they beat Preston tonight.
Albion are already four points ahead of third-placed Leicester and six in front of Swansea.
Cox is more than willing to swap places with Newcastle, provided the Baggies are in the top two come May.
“If we can keep picking points up then it doesn’t really matter what Newcastle do,” said the striker, who scored the fourth goal on Saturday.
“It’s all about us. We have people to come back who can make us stronger.
“If we are both up there come May it won’t matter and I won’t complain – we’d both like to win the league but, let’s be honest, our main aim is promotion, that’s the most important thing for us.
“We had a gap already and even if we’d lost on Saturday we could have afforded one defeat and not lost second spot.
“But it was important to catch Newcastle, who were two points ahead of us, but more so to pull away from those below us.
“Newcastle never seem to play on the same day as us but even if they do win then we have to go to Sheffield Wednesday and ensure we get a result to put pressure on them.”
Albion scored 88 league goals en route to their 2008 title triumph under Tony Mowbray, scoring 109 in all competitions.
Cox believes they must ensure a policy of winning games, not worrying about goal margins.
“To score 100 goals was good,” he added. “They might have conceded more than they did but if we can score 100 – lovely.
“But that’s not our aim. If we score 90 and go up then we’ll be happy. We don’t want to score 100 and come third. Every team goes through little blips. We’ve hopefully had ours. It’s nice to score goals, it gives you confidence.
“We did that against Watford, then beat Leicester and, in all honesty, the international break wasn’t particularly welcome. But we went away, worked hard and on Saturday it looked like we’d never been away.”
