West Brom boss recalls message from Leeds hero Marcelo Bielsa about struggle

The head coach is bidding to end his toughest run of form in charge of Albion after seven games without a win, featuring a sequence of five draws on the spin. Burnley are the visitors on Thursday night.

Albion have remained tough to beat in this spell and just two league defeats this term has seen them keep hold of a play-off spot in a Championship season where it does not appear promotion hopefuls will race clear.

Corberan joked he would like to say this is his first poor run of results as a head coach but back in early 2021, barely six months into his first English top job at Huddersfield, the Terriers embarked on a nine-match winless run which included seven defeats and an FA Cup exit.

The context was very different to his current spell at Albion. Corberan has spoken before about internal struggles at the John Smith's Stadium, where he was working with one of the division's poorest budgets. Corberan and Huddersfield just about recovered - three wins between January and May were enough to scrape survival by the skin of their teeth after a promising first half to the season.

So the Albion boss has been here before, albeit not with the expectation that comes with managing the Baggies in the second tier.

The pressures of defeat, or not winning, are not new to him. The 41-year-old - whose home region of Valencia has been struck by a harrowing flooding tragedy and more than 200 deaths - feels badly responsible when his side does not win and recalled advice from his former Leeds boss Marcelo Bielsa shortly into his time as a head coach.

"I remember in my first year I call Bielsa to say 'Marcelo, I don't know how you are many years in this work because I am six months in and I have two feelings - relief or suffer. If you are telling me to enjoy then I don't see it a lot'," Corberan said.

"He told me 'welcome to one of the most challenging work'. This is being a football coach.

"For sure (the lows are lower than the highs) because you know you have the next game and another challenge. Every coach suffers the defeats, it is part of the job."

The Albion boss last oversaw victory in a 1-0 home success over Plymouth on September 21. Corberan added: "Unfortunately I have had this (run of form) before! I would like to tell you this is my first time without winning...but no, I have been in challenging moments always.

"In football when you win you have to keep winning and when you lose you have to win to not lose! If you ask me 'do I feel different?' I will tell you no!

"Always you need to win. My first year in Huddersfield we need to win to survive the second year we need to win to make the play-offs. My first year here the first part we need to win to survive the second year we need to win to make the play-off. So at the end you need to win every time.

"If you ask me 'did anything change now?' No. Nothing changed. What can change? The confidence you can have in yourself when you watch yourself have a better result or a worse result."

Things were better for Corberan and Huddersfield after their season of struggle as the Spaniard remarkably took the Terriers to the play-off final a year later.

"I suffer even more because I would like to give to West Bromwich Albion fans and to the people at the club who believed in me and gave me everything as a coach. The things I want to give to them...it made me suffer this a lot," Corberan added of current struggles.

A tough run is not all that has played on the mind of the Albion boss of late. Mercifully his home town of Cheste in the Valencian region was not affected badly by the floods, bar a lack of power which meant no contact with family at home. His Valencia-based sister and her family are also safe.

But Corberan admitted some illness in his household and the stress of disaster at his home as well as Spanish political in-fighting led to a sleepless night before the clash at Luton last week.