Di Matteo hails hard-fought win

Roberto Di Matteo
12 April 2012

West Brom manager Roberto Di Matteo admitted his side were made to fight all the way for their 3-2 win over Coca-Cola Championship opponents Blackpool.

Albion edged a thrilling encounter at the seaside with Graham Dorrans lashing home the winning penalty with seven minutes to play.

Baggies manager Di Matteo said: "This was a really hard fought match. We have to dig in and fight for the points. Not many teams come here and go away with anything but I am delighted with my players' performance.

"We took our chances well and Roman Bednar did his job up front with two well-taken goals."

Keith Southern had given Blackpool the lead but two strikes from Roman Bednar gave the promotion hopefuls the lead.

Stephen Dobbie levelled after 80 minutes only for Dorrans to end the hosts' hopes from the spot.

Tangerines boss Ian Holloway was left angry about what he perceived to be a poor penalty call after Ishmael Miller went down with Andy Butler in attendance.

"I said before the game that our next two matches could be defining. It is a shame we had to lose this one on a referee's penalty decision," said Holloway. "My lads are shattered about that decision because they thought it was a fair tackle.

"However I thought we did well against a side I consider to be the best in the Championship. They have a class squad based on established Premiership players and we gave them a really good run for their money. They know that.

"We will have to see how the next couple of games go but my target for the season was always going to be 52 points and safety. That remains my target, anything else is a bonus."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in