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Carlos Corberan admits West Brom were 'second best' in Burnley defeat

Carlos Corberan admitted West Brom were second best as they slipped to a cruel late defeat at Burnley.

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Carlos Corberan during the Sky Bet Championship between Burnley and West Bromwich Albion at Turf Moor on January 20, 2023 in Burnley, United Kingdom. (Photo by Adam Fradgley/West Bromwich Albion FC via Getty Images).

The Baggies raced into a seventh minute lead through Darnell Furlong's header and defended well before Nathan Tella levelled 15 minutes from time.

Then just as it looked like heading for a draw - Scott Twine came off the bench to curl home a free kick and hand Burnley all three points.

Corberan admitted Burnley were the better side - and believes scoring so early gave his side a feeling that they had to just 'defend one result'.

He said: "We couldn't get the result we wanted to take, we couldn't even get the point that we could have had after they equalised. We have to now - accept is not the word - reflect why they today were better than us.

"Perhaps it was the fact that we scored so early that it gave us the feeling that we had to defend one result, but to win this game we need to offer more solutions and compete more. They scored their first when we had one less player, as Okay was out of the pitch, and they scored the goal in that moment.

"After, the second one was a free kick, an amazing goal by the player, who scored. It was a pity, because they played better than us today. We were not too far away from getting the result we wanted to get, but we have to do more things to win these games."

Leaders Burnley were heading for their first home defeat in the second tier in eight years until Twine popped up with a late winner.

Corberan insisted his side found it difficult to press Vincent Kompany's men - and should have been more attacking and aggressive in the second period.

He added: "They are a team difficult to press, because their goalkeeper finds solutions, you need to go one v one if you want to press and sometimes we couldn't do that - it's sometimes hard to adapt to the structure of a team.

"The idea was to be tactically adaptive as we were in the first half, but if you are just defending, then often it's a question of time. The solution here would have been to attack more - we didn't attack well enough, with Rogic and the players we play with on one side to accumulate more players, we didn't find any type of advantage.

"We needed to attack more in the second half, ask more for the ball, and play with that personality that is aggressive. Sometimes it's not easy. We will accept this defeat, we understand they were better and this has to give us the ideas that we must keep growing a lot."