West Brom: Scott Carson on why the next two games are so important

Nov 8 2010 by Christopher Lepkowski, Birmingham Mail

SCOTT Carson believes Albion’s back-to-back defeats has raised the importance of this week’s two games.

Yesterday’s 2-0 defeat to Manchester City meant the Baggies lost consecutive games for the first time this season and only the second time during Roberto Di Matteo’s reign as boss.

And the Albion captain feels that merely cranks up the pressure on the team this week, starting with Wednesday’s game at West Ham.

Di Matteo’s men follow up their trip to Upton Park with another away game on Saturday, at Wigan Athletic.

Carson is keen to ensure that Albion do not slip towards the drop zone.

“We know we need to get something,” said the goalkeeper.

“We’ve had two successive losses, something we’ve not had before and something we’re not used to.

“We need to get our heads around this quickly today when we get back into training and concentrate on getting two results this week.

“Looking at the League table the middle-part is very tight.

“We’re only a couple of losses of being dragged back into the mix so we don’t want that to happen.

“Even when we’ve won, we’ve kept our feet on the ground and always looked to the next game.

“We need to do that with defeats too. Wednesday is a very big game.”

Carson feels that last Monday night’s defeat at Blackpool did little to help Albion’s cause yesterday.

The Baggies had to play most of the game with nine men and produced a stirring display, despite losing 2-1.

He believes the intensity of Albion’s display at Bloomfield Road caused a slip in standards against City.

“Monday was a tough game - almost a double shift for some people - so maybe in the first-half yesterday we lacked energy and didn’t close them down enough,” he continued.

“We probably played as we did in the second-half and made it tighter.

“Everyone knew in the second half what we needed to do. Once we did that we gave them a game.