Pressure, Wembley and Southampton – every word from West Brom boss Carlos Corberan

Carlos Corberan greeted the media at West Bromwich Albion’s press conference at the club’s training ground on Friday afternoon ahead of their Championship play-off semi-final first leg against Southampton at The Hawthorns on Sunday afternoon. Albion finished the season in fifth place, a position they had held for most of the season, and earned their chance of promotion to the Premier League via the play-offs. This is what Corberan had to say…

After all the build up, the wait is almost over…

I am very pleased because we look forward to playing these types of games. I wanted to put West Bromwich in the highest position, and the highest positions give you the opportunity to fight for promotion. You can only look forward to experiencing such moments.

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The clubs in the play-offs have been well established – there hasn’t been a delay from a team this year

Over the course of the season, we saw four teams that were better than the rest. They fought each other for promotion. The three teams that got relegated from the Premier League, as you would expect before the season because they have more resources, and then the one team that finished where nobody expected – that’s why football is amazing – was Ipswich.

The rest of the teams were fighting for promotion with play-off possibilities. We were one of the teams, with other clubs, who made massive investments to reach these positions. Now, based on the work put in by this group, we have the opportunity to be involved in the play-offs. There are leagues within the league – Leicester, Ipswich who made it, Leeds and Southampton who were in the running but didn’t make it.

Then there was us and Norwich who also achieved a lot of teams – the likes of Hull City, Coventry, Middlesbrough, Preston, they put up a massive run. Then there was a league of teams fighting to avoid relegation to League 1. It was a great championship season with excitement in all parts of the league.

If you follow it to the end, the games we were playing for these goals, we succeeded, but now we have to face the play-off, focus on the opponent, a team that was better than us because they finished 12 points. better. They were in the race for promotion and that shows the level of their team.

Are your two meetings with Southampton this season relevant ahead of these games?

Depends. We have more opportunities to learn from these games. They can learn, too, about the things they did that helped them beat us, we can learn about what we didn’t do well enough. We will learn to avoid negative behaviors to help us compete at our best. It makes no difference. They finished with 12 more points, they were better than us in 46 games. Let’s see who is better in two games.

How much do you like these games? There is so much on the line

You can only enjoy these types of games – the big ones – as a coach. These are the games we always want to play. You want to make your club succeed and achieve things. You have more difficult ones like fighting to avoid relegation – they are not pretty games because you know the consequence of what can be if you don’t win.

To me you can only be motivated to play these types of games. If you play a semi-final – of the Champions League, of the Europa League, any big competition like the one we’re going to play – you know you’re going to face an important opponent in front of you. They will demand the best from us.

How is the team feeling?

We will play a game we fought for. In the last weeks we have fought to reach this position and now we can fight to get to Wembley, that is the next target. To get to Wembley we know we’re going to play at least 180 minutes against one of the best teams in the competition – not just because I say it, but because of what they’ve achieved.

We are facing a great challenge, but to succeed in life you have to overcome challenges.

Do you consider it a bonus to be in the play-offs?

We fought a lot and put in a lot of effort to get into the play-off position. Direct promotion was impossible for us, now we have the opportunity, with the play-off, to reach the goal of promotion. We have to do everything we can to get to Wembley.

That’s our target right now. After you can say who the favorite is, where the pressure is, whether it’s a bonus or not, but we’ll have two games that will give us the opportunity to get to Wembley, against a team that will make things very, very difficult. and who want exactly the same.

Can you compare or take anything from your play-off campaign at Huddersfield?

It is impossible to find any relationship between my time in Huddersfield and my time here now. It is impossible to find any relationship between Luton as an opponent and Southampton as a team. We’re not Huddersfield, we’re West Bromwich and what we’re trying to use is our experience as a team, that’s important.

In these 46 weeks, our experience should help us achieve what we want in the next games we play, and our experience playing them should help us better understand the type of game we will play . The time spent in Huddersfield has nothing to do with the games we are going to play now.

Do you think the pressure is on Southampton as favourites?

If you want to achieve something in football, pressure is a motivation. I don’t see the pressure as negative. Sometimes it’s what turns you on and makes you give 100%. If you don’t have that pressure, you have to find something to turn you on – from wanting to get to Wembley, from the love of the fans, your family, people, whatever the reason. Pressure cannot be an aspect that lowers your level – it must be the exact opposite.

Any fresh team news?

In the last period of the competition, we did not lose players for more than one match. Everyone was fit and we had the opportunity to add players coming back from long-term injuries. We worked with 21 outfield (outfield) players, which is the maximum number of players we have now.

Are you approaching this week differently in any way?

No, I don’t think so. It’s been a demanding week and an emotional week, which you’d expect. We’re doing exactly the same thing, which I’ve been doing since the first day I coached this team. If I had done something different, it would mean that I should have done something different by now. We have to give 100%, we have to analyze the opponent, we have to prepare for the game, create exercises based on the game situations we will have.

With the video analyst, we’re looking to create behaviors for what we’re going to face, what we’re going to need, as always, but it’s true that we’ve had a week of preparation for this game, maybe an extra day because it’s Sunday. It was a positive week, but I did exactly the same as normal.

You’ve got Bartley, Townsend, Phillips who have been in the play-offs before with Albion – do you draw on that experience?

Not much. When you play the big games, they build you as a player. They had these big games, but I have players, for example – Johnston played big games with Celtic and his national team. Semi Ajayi played a final this year in the Africa Cup of Nations. Grady played in the semifinal. The more games you play, the more you become accustomed to playing in a demanding and large atmosphere.

What you did before means nothing in the future. You have more experience, but what we want is for those who use it to their best and those who don’t just play it like they always do. This game is no different – the different one is Wembley. We don’t play a neutral game in a 46-game season.

Sometimes you play two legs in a cup competition but the different game is Wembley. It’s a final and that means you’re playing in a neutral stadium – probably the most important stadium in the country. This has more emotional aspects that make the game different from the previous ones. This is a home game followed by an away game. It’s a big game too, but we’ve played some big games this year.

Can you learn from the two meetings against Southampton?

Yes and no. If you split those two games into four innings, I’d probably say they were better than us in three. If you take the expected goal in these games, only away from home in the second half have we got better numbers than them. In the other three halves, we saw that Southampton are a very specific team in the way they do things.

They are a team built to attack in a different way. They are a team that is not easy to press, because they do not have a set shape. Form is the starting point and then there is a lot of fluidity in attacking positions and behaviours. It is a difficult game to prepare. They have solutions for the moments they will have during the game.

Do you feel that your red card against them influenced the result in any way?

I don’t consider it. I would like to tell you that yes, that I was the key because then on Sunday I just wouldn’t touch the ball and we can win! Unfortunately, I was ruled out because I can’t play inside the lines. How much can we help? The coach’s impact is to prepare the team during the week, mentally. The coach’s impact is to prepare tactically throughout the season to create an identity for the team.

Coach impact is the decision you make when you watch the game. It is true that I was watching the match on TV, not live, but when I analyze the opponents I do it on TV. In the end it doesn’t change much how I made the decisions. If we lost that game, it’s because they were much better than us.

It’s a challenge, because they are a good team, but like every team in the world, like every human, we all have strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes our weaknesses can be our strengths. We will try to use our strengths by using their weaknesses and they will do the opposite. Let’s see who can win the challenge.

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