West Brom boss Carlos Corberan: David Button allowed opener to affect him in Birmingham defeat

Button was at fault for both goals at St Andrew's as the Baggies fell to an unwanted double against their West Midlands rivals this season.

The keeper, in for the injured Alex Palmer who faces up to seven weeks out injured, was caught out by Hannibal Mejbri's free-kick after 10 minutes on an evening Corberan's side never got going.

Albion were nervy in front of Button, who was culpable again for the second seven minutes into the second half as Krystian Bielik headed in from a corner after the keeper's failed punch.

The Baggies can respond to a poor evening next Wednesday with a home clash against play-off rivals Blackburn at The Hawthorns - where it remains to be seen whether the Spaniard keeps faith in under-fire Button, or plumps for 21-year-old academy graduate Josh Griffiths.

"I think the first goal affected him too much," Corberan said of Button. "The fact that he conceded that goal, it's a goal we don't want him to be surprised by, but it surprised him.

"He was waiting for the cross. When you are a player who are not competing at the level that you expect from yourself, these goals can create and increase the doubts. It affected him too much.

"He was taking risks and making decisions which showed a level of personality. There weren't many chances for them where he could react to come back to the level of confidence you need to do it.

"Unfortunately we conceded from the corner, an action he was involved in too.

"It's clear that it isn't a game that I know he is going to be happy with. I'm not happy with myself, and I know no players are going to be happy with today. It'd be easy now to say that we lost because of David, but I don't think so - we lost because in two actions, they surprised us and then corner we missed the action.

"After that, I must tell you that we had many minutes to create attacks and that's something we didn't do. It'd be easy we lost because David was in the goal, but for me it's not true. What I proposed didn't work."

Corberan stopped short of saying he will take Button out of the firing line but when asked on his team selection moving forward stressed he would analyse why the performance did not work collectively.

The head coach felt Albion as a defensive unit generally performed well enough and limited Blues to few chances, especially from open play. But it was two individual mistakes directly from set-pieces that proved their Achilles' heel.

Instead he was unimpressed with how Albion worked as an attacking outlet. He said his side could not deal with Blues' level of aggression and were unable to find a way through.

The boss said: "The team in general didn't perform at the level we needed to. It took more time than usual to adapt, and after the first goal the players were surprised.

"They were looking for a cross and the player made a finish into the goal. The second goal, we didn't deal with the corner well - of course the keeper is going to be involved in this situation. It's part of the job of a keeper.

"It's a moment to analyse myself, why I didn't help the team well enough to adapt better, why collectively we didn't do enough well, and after evaluate individual performances to see which players were at the level that the game demanded, and which players weren't.

"Results are always the consequences of the level that you perform. Collectively and individually there weren't some good performances."