Albion are in worst form: Carl

Hoefkens believes the Baggies' recent performances have been the least impressive since his summer arrival from Stoke.

But the Belgian international has paid tribute to the squad for grinding out wins at Hull in the Championship and against Charlton in the FA Cup.

"I think performance-wise we were in our worst run of the season," said Hoefkens.

"We didn't have very good games at Ipswich or Charlton.

"We didn't play brilliantly at Hull either but we got a massive result.

"If you're not in the best of form the main thing is to keep winning important games.

"We just need to push on from here and keep digging in like we did at Hull."

Hoefkens saluted the Albion rearguard effort at Hull as they held on with 10 men to win 3-1 following Paul Robinson's sending-off.

And he sympathised with Robinson, who will complete a two-match ban tomorrow after what Albion believe was a harsh red card for two bookable offences.

"There is no way Robbo should have been sent-off ," said Hoefkens. "I think he'll admit his first challenge was a yellow card.

"But the second one wasn't even a foul."

"At least we showed we learned our lesson from going down to 10 men with 20 minutes to go when we were drawing 2-2 against Coventry at home and losing 4-2.

"We made silly mistakes after Robbo went off in that game and it cost us.

"We learned from that and did really well at Hull to hang onto our lead and even add to it right at the end."