Bristol City manager Lee Johnson says his players need to bounce back after falling to a heavy 4-1 win defeat at the Hawthorns against table-topping West Brom.
Goals from Kieran Gibbs and Matheus Pereira our the home side in control before Famara Diedhiou scored in the 80th minute to give the Robins hope.
However, any ideas of a comeback were quashed when Hal Robson-Kanu and Charlie Austin scored to complete a resounding win for the Baggies.
The result leaves Bristol in 7th – one point behind sixth-places Swansea who drew at Huddersfield on Tuesday.
And Johnson, whose side also face Huddersfield on Saturday, has called on his players to bounce back quickly as he apologised for the under-par performance at the Hawthorns.
In an interview with RobinsTV, Johnson said: “The performance wasn’t good enough and I apologise to the supporters and the fanbase. I don’t think it was a lack of effort or wanting to win, I just felt that we didn’t start the game in the correct performance state.
“Three or four players didn’t turn up early and that was important. Against a top-of-the-table side away we had to make sure that we earned the right to play in that first 15-20 minutes. They scored, not against the run of play because they pressed and countered well, but we made two quick errors and they scored a decent goal. We tried to regain control but we didn’t do it well enough.
“We didn’t look as athletic and as fleet-footed as West Brom on occasions and we got a little bit stuck.
“It’s frustrating to watch but now we’ve got to accept that we have lost three points, create that siege mentality within the squad and go out and put in a performance in front of our home fans.
“It’s a bad result, we’re hurting, our pride is hurt but we will bounce back and we’ve got to get ourselves a win on Saturday and a good performance to make sure we get back in the play-off hunt.”
