Valerien Ismael: We need to rebuild West Brom belief this week

Friday night’s goalless draw with Nottingham Forest extended the Baggies’ difficult recent run to just one win in six games scoring only two goals in the process.

Other weekend results ensured they didn’t lose any ground on the top two but Ismael knows they need to improve going forward if they are to get back in the thick of the race for automatic promotion.

“Our issue is just to cross the line,” said the head coach. “We had four big chances (against Forest) with Darnell Furlong, with Diangana, with Karlan Grant and at the very end with Jordan Hugill.

“The picture at the minute is that we’re struggling to score goals. We need to work on it. The good thing now is that we play Saturday, Saturday, in a good rhythm.

“We can recover well and Friday was our third game in seven days.

“We can get the confidence back in training and to put us in a real situation and to develop the desire to score the goals.”

And Ismael insists it is on the training ground that the work has to take place to try and turn possession and promise into points.

“It’s a case to analyse, to see why,” he said.

“Now we must go deep into the details. Is it the body shape? Is it the positioning? At the minute we put the ball in areas where we’re really dangerous, so we create an overload down the sides and we put the crosses in, but maybe we need to adapt our crosses, are they too strong? We need to work on it.

“We have a good week to prepare which will give me and my staff time to break it down, maybe with more individual training sessions with our unit, and we need to make sure we get our confidence back.”

Ismael admitted he had no complaints with the red card dished out to Jayson Molumby but is now facing a central midfield dilemma with the Irishman joining Jake Livermore on the suspended list ahead of Saturday’s game.