Carlos Corberan praises Daryl Dike's 'all round performance' in win over Middlesbrough

Dike fired an early brace with two quickfire goals inside the opening 10 minutes to shell-shock Michael Carrick's visitors as the hosts continued their superb Hawthorns form to stay on the coat-tails of the play-off chasers.

The shutout was just a second cleat sheet in seven in all competitions for Albion and Corberan has been calling for a return to the basics of defending and a better management of games.

He was delighted with a collective team display in one of the finer results of his four-month Baggies tenure. As well as Dike's fourth and fifth goals of the season, young goalkeeper Josh Griffiths, 21, managed a first clean sheet in his third Albion appearance and there were superb displays from creator-in-chief John Swift - involved in both goals - Jed Wallace and Erik Pieters, among others.

However for striker Dike, now over the horror injuries that saw him miss the best part of a year, his overall work-rate and 'defensive commitment', as the head coach put it, meant just much as the early well-taken finishes.

"I value a lot his defensive commitment today, as much as his goals - because goals are key to win football matches - that he scored," Corberan explained.

"We know as strikers, playmakers and wingers have responsibilities to score goals, because many times they are going to finish the chances we create - and the team have responsibility to create chances.

"For the striker it's important to increase his confidence by scoring goals, but for me I reward more the football that he was doing at the same level that I reward his goals."

Dike put in a tireless shift and was visibly feeling the effects towards the end before he was withdrawn for forward colleague Brandon Thomas-Asante.

Boro enjoyed no shortage of possession in spells but could not break down a resilient and hard-working home side who limited the Championship's third-placed side to precious little.

Albion two goals were well-worked efforts, with Swift at the heart of both and Wallace involved in the first and the Baggies could have won by a wider margin. Wallace shot over and had an effort blocked in the first period, before Dike's US compatriot Zack Steffen denied the frontman a hat-trick and Dara O'Shea headed wide.

Corberan said: "The team in attack was finding ways to create chances, with mobility, with passes to the striker, with passes behind the defenders, we create a chance too in the first half with Townsend, who received the pass of Diangana. The cut-back came to Molumby who couldn't finish well and then the ball went to Wallace.

"Always it's important to score goals, but also as much it is about protecting your goal against the opponent."

A pleased head coach expanded his team's overall display: "More than the game management, the mentality to face the game today was the right one.

"From the beginning, the team was showing a lot of personality and desire and self-demanding to achieve the result we wanted. After this, the team was very concentrated in the things we needed to do well.

"One was defend well, another was attack more. When he we had the ball, we found a good balance to be solid and to be aggressive.

"Only in the last ten minutes of the first half we didn't manage well the defensive behaviours in the left side of our structure, but we competed very well in the second half. We kept being aggressive. We did another fantastic 15 minutes of the second half and after we managed the game how we needed to."