Bristol City boss Liam Manning chose ‘not to waste his energy’ talking about the officiating after he watched his side suffer their fifth defeat in six Sky Bet Championship matches as they lost 2-0 at play-off chasing West Brom.
Tom Fellows opened the scoring for the Baggies in the 45th minute, before captain Jed Wallace doubled the hosts’ advantage within five minutes of the second half commencing.
City’s players – including goalkeeper Max O’Leary – took exception to the manner of the opening goal, claiming Albion forward Grady Diangana had blocked O’Leary’s view from an offside position. The goal stood and left Robins players and Manning himself bemused.
“You waste your breath on him [referee Tom Nield] to be honest,” he said. “I thought the ref was really poor all game, so I don’t want to waste my energy talking about him.
“I thought the lads all left it out there. We kept trying to play but we just lacked quality in the final third. We need to keep working and improving on that.
“The big thing today was belief. When you’ve had a tough time, believing in the work you do…too often when we go behind we don’t respond well enough. That’s for us to look at but you can see the work that has been done.”
City are 14th, having fallen away in the play-off race, and away supporters at The Hawthorns voiced their frustrations at the full-time whistle having seen their side win just twice on the road since October.
“I can only control what I can,” Manning replied, when asked about his job security.
“You need to have an element of realism. We’ve recruited, made a change mid-season. We have shown we can make progression despite having sold two players to the Premier League last season.
“We want the fans with us, it helps us and it brings us energy at times.
“I turn up, do my best every single day. You can see what the plan is on the pitch, but we need players to step up at key times.”
West Brom, meanwhile, tightened their grasp on fifth position and strengthened their pursuit of the play-offs with this victory.
Manning’s counterpart Carlos Corberan, who has transformed the club’s fortunes since his appointment in October 2022, was only left to rue the margin of victory, which he believed ought to have been greater because of the chances his side created following Wallace’s finish.
“I think that we should have scored the third one, if we were to say it was comfortable. In these types of games, a goal in the last moments can change the feeling,” he said.
“We needed to be constant more than patient, to insist on the things that we needed to do.
“When the opponent is defending and being well organised, you need to disorganise them to create the chance. When you start to do that, positive things can happen – but so can mistakes that give opportunities to them.
“In general we managed some moments in attack well, in some moments no. The same in defence.
“There are things that (we) need to do better to be more dominant in the game.”