Home Form Concerns Hodgson After Swansea Defeat

West Bromwich Albion boss Roy Hodgson says his side’s poor form is a concern for him after a defeat against Swansea City this afternoon.

Today’s loss at the Hawthorns means it’s 8 defeats in 12 at home for Albion, which puts them down into 15th place and 6 points away from the drop zone.

The hosts took the lead in the second half, but within four minutes of doing so, the Swans struck back twice to win, with goals coming from Gylfi Sigurdsson – who then set up the winner for Danny Graham.

Hodgson said:

“If we`re going to consistently lose our home matches then we`re going to be hard put to get the necessary number of points we need to get away from home,”

“It`s pretty much a statement of the obvious which we`re totally aware of. We need to get at least 14 more points to give ourselves a chance.”

Hodgson said he was disappointed with his side`s first-half performance but added that Albion had deserved a penalty for a handball from Ashley Williams.

“All too familiar I`m afraid. We keep giving ourselves a chance and getting in good situations but we come to play at home in front of our crowd we disappoint them by not being able to get a result,”

“It`s the vicious circle which can only be broken by us getting a result and we don`t seem capable of doing it.

“I don`t think we played at all well in the first-half and yet when you see the TV replays it is quite amazing that we didn`t get that penalty which would have probably taken us to the half-time interval leading one-nil perhaps a little against the run of play.

“I would defy anybody to say that`s not hand-ball and it`s very disappointing that such a clear hand-ball was not seen because I`m sure the Swansea players have basically accepted their fate.

“But I don`t think we particularly deserved to be one-nil up at half-time. But when we took the lead I thought maybe this is going to be a situation now where we get a result but it only lasted a minute the lead and you find yourselves suddenly two goals to one down and then it`s a familiar pattern, the last 20 minutes we worked very hard.

“Chances are there for you but we`re not taking them, in particular Peter [Odemwingie`s] miss from such close range, those misses are very, very crucial.

“If he`d had scored it we might have been saying we`re happy with our day`s work but he didn`t score it so once again we`ll go away extremely unhappy.”