West Brom beginning to gel, believes Jonny Evans

The Baggies tried a new set-up at The Hawthornso n Saturday with Jay Rodriguez playing in the number 10 role behind frontman Salomon Rondon.

And it is a formation Evans believes is worth persisting with despite Albion falling to a late sucker punch as Watford levelled with virtually the last kick of the game.

"It was a new formation we tried with one off the front, something we haven't tried much," said the 29-year-old defender.

"It was nice to see Salomon take his goal really well and hopefully many more to come from him.

"Hopefully when we come back for the Albion games we'll be in a better place and the team is starting to gel now, I think you could see that on Saturday."

The point against Watford kept Albion in the top half of the Premier League table but had they hung on, they would have been sitting above Arsenal in seventh spot. And Evans admitted the late blow was hard to take for a side built on being so hard to break down.

"It was gutting to concede a goal right at the end like that, especially the way we pride ourselves on our defensive resilience," added the Northern Ireland international.

"Right at the end, it's not easy to accept. It was quite an evenly matched game, we took a two-goal lead I thought they came into it well and put us under a lot of pressure at the end."

However, one crumb of comfort for the big defender was his goal which put Albion two-nil ahead in the game.

Evans nodded in at the far post and said he was determined not to miss out on his first goal of the season – afer a series off near misses earlier in the season.

"It was a nice one to get at the back post, I though Ahmed (Hegazi) was going to take my head off but I had one taken off me last season by McAuley, so I was making sure Ahmed wouldn't do that.

"Big McAuley took one off me last season, Claudio Yacob took one off me at the Manchester City game, so I made sure it was coming off my head.

"Either that or Hegazi's boot was taking my head off. It was nice to get on the scoresheet again but it's hard to enjoy those things when you don't win."

The Belfast-born defender has now joined up with the Northern Ireland squad ahead of their crunch qualifier with Germany on Thursday night.

The Green and White Army have a slim hope of automatic qualification for next summer's World Cup in Russia but they must win on Thursday and hope Germany lose their final match against Azerbaijan.

The more likely scenario is for Michael O'Neill's men to finish second and hopefully qualify through the runners-up play-offs.

And Evans is fired up to secure a place in the play-offs at least.

"We've got internationals now, it's a big game against Germany," he said. "We've guaranteed second spot but the play-off spot isn't guaranteed.

"We go into it against an unbelievable team, we'll try and get something from it."