Charlie Austin: Winning ugly key to West Brom rise
Charlie Austin believes Albion’s ability to win ugly will be key to continuing their charge at the top of the Championship.
The Baggies hold a two-point lead over Leeds at the summit as the season approaches halfway, while their advantage over third-placed Preston is 12 points.
Slaven Bilic’s team have won plaudits for their attacking play but have also been able to grind out wins when required, with last Saturday’s 3-2 win at Blues a perfect example.
Austin, who scored twice off the bench as the Baggies came from behind to claim victory, has warned opponents will continue to make things tough in a bid to shoot down the leaders.
“It is a healthy gap (we’ve got), of course it is. Any gap is healthy. We’ve set the standard,” he said.
“Teams are going to come at us. Teams are going to try and stop us from playing. Get after us.
“We’ve just got to worry about ourselves, keep doing what we want to do and, if it’s not always possible to play good football, then we have to turn games ugly.
“We’ve got experienced players that can make it ugly for the opposition.
“We are quite good and flexible in having two ways of playing and today we needed to roll our sleeves up, battle on and get the win and that’s we did.
“You can’t just play pretty football all the time. Even top teams don’t play pretty football all the time. When they’ve got to play ugly, they play ugly, it is as simple as that.”
Albion have the chance to put a dent in one of the chasing pack when they host fourth-placed Brentford on Saturday, the first fixture in a busy festive programme which culminates in a New Year’s Day showdown with closest challengers Leeds at The Hawthorns.
A strong run over this period would leave the Baggies superbly placed to push on and clinch promotion, yet Austin insists the focus must be on one match at a time.
“Automatic promotion? It’s too far ahead at the moment,” he said. “We’ve got to take games as they come. We’ve set our standard. We know in house what our targets are. Are we en route to achieving those? Yes.
“The gap is healthy at the moment. We’ve made that gap happen. We need to continue on the way we’ve been.
“Twenty-one games, we’ve lost one game, a few draws in there. That’s going to happen. That’s football.
“But we’ve just got to keep going, keep getting the wins. It’s a busy period.”
