West Brom boss Slaven Bilic pleased with opening day win

Bilic's charges kicked off the Championship campaign by recovering from Matty Cash's early strike with goals from Kyle Edwards and Matt Phillips to triumph 2-1 at the City Ground.

And the Croatian said: "We're really pleased, starting with a win is always important.

"It means an unbelievable lot. It's more than three points, it gives you confidence and proves you have done well in pre-season.

"Then when you add that it's away, at Forest, and you know you deserved it, it's a good story.

"They started better than us. I said at half-time to the guys, although we were winning, that we can't start like that. Or was it that they started brilliantly? It was probably something in between.

"But what pleased me was when they scored, we started to play the way we wanted to start.

"From that quantity of attacking, the goals came, and goals always help."

Five players - Romaine Sawyers, Semi Ajayi, Kenneth Zohore, Filip Krovinovic and Nathan Ferguson - made their Albion debuts, with Ferguson the man of the match.

There were a lot of positives for Bilic, but things he wants to improve upon too.

"I'm not happy with the last 15 minutes of the first half and the first half an hour of the second half, as with our quality, we should be creating five chances. We had one from Kyle Edwards," added Bilic.

"We should have had five chances but it was a lack of confidence or happiness that we were winning 2-1.

"That's the part where have to be nastier and more direct and get the goal to kill the game off.

"But we deserved it. It was a really good team performance. It's only a start, but a good start"