2008-08-18 : West Brom

Dear Supporter,
You could see that Saturday's game against West Brom was the first game of the season. After the physical game we had on Wednesday night I was worried before the game that we would not be sharp, but we made a good start and were always in control. Only issue was that we could not finish the game off.

West Brom defended intelligently and played in a positive way. You expected them at some stage to crumble but they never did and they kept going until the last second of the game. They have fantastic spirit and a positive attitude towards the game. They were not dirty, they were resilient and well organised.

So I am pleased with the fact that we didn't concede a goal. Overall it was a good week for us. A winning start, a win in the Champions League, so yes a good week.

I'm not really worried about the lack of goals because I don't feel we were sharp enough to finish off what we created. I believe when everyone is fit we can create clear cut chances. At times against West Brom the final ball was not good enough, too heavy, not timed well enough, and I feel we will improve a lot on that.

We created many chances, but it's about converting them. If you look at the amount we scored in the last 10 years and you can see we have scored a few, even last year we had a very good striking force. It was not so much offensively we were punished last year, it was defensively.

Samir Nasri has shown he is an intelligent player, he has good technique and can integrate well with the team. He also worked hard for the team. On Saturday he added something that people wanted from him in France; that was to score goals. He had started to score some goals towards the end of last season and had a scoring start on Saturday.

Thanks for your support,