West Bromwich Albion 0-2 Swansea City: Piroe and Christie strike for visitors

West Bromwich Albion’s depressing run continued as Swansea Metropolis additional hit their fading promotion hopes with a deserved 2-0 win at The Hawthorns.

Cyrus Christie then fired dwelling with a robust effort with six minutes left.

Callum Robinson twice hit the publish for West Brom, who’re nonetheless on the lookout for a primary win after 5 video games since Steve Bruce took cost.

The Baggies had been a fixture within the play-off berths earlier this time period, however proceed to slip off the promotion tempo and are actually thirteenth, eight factors off the play-off spots, whereas Swansea rise to sixteenth.

West Brom’s season has gone from unhealthy to worse in current weeks, however boss Bruce made only one change to the aspect which began Tuesday’s 2-1 defeat at Middlesbrough with Robinson changing Karlan Grant.

Russell Martin made three alterations to the Swansea aspect crushed 4-0 at Sheffield United 9 days in the past with Kyle Naughton – returning after a month out with a thigh downside – and Hannes Wolf getting back from damage, and Michael Obafemi recalled in assault.

This was a contest between two sides in wretched goalscoring type and that proved to be the decisive think about a sport missing in incident, with each goalkeepers largely afforded a quiet night, which mustn’t have been a shock.

West Brom had failed to attain of their earlier two Championship video games at The Hawthorns and had solely discovered the web as soon as within the earlier six video games.

The stats on the highway for Swansea had been equally poor, scoring solely as soon as in six away video games in 2022, so it was considerably predictable that neither aspect created a transparent likelihood in a sluggish opening 20 minutes.

The hosts thought they’d taken the lead on 21 minutes with the primary clear likelihood of the competition, however Robinson’s header hit the publish after Dara O’Shea’s cross. It was as shut as Albion would come to scoring.

A flat environment and a scarcity of probabilities meant a scarcity of depth in a primary half during which it took Swansea a full 40 minutes to create an effort.

Matt Grimes curled simply large of objective from 25 yards earlier than Sam Johnstone saved Christie’s header – the Swans’ first try heading in the right direction – and simply stopped Jamie Paterson’s weak effort.

The hosts didn’t handle a single shot heading in the right direction as the sport moved previous the hour mark, however Swansea couldn’t take benefit with Piroe’s fierce shot hitting the skin of the publish.

Nonetheless, it was Swansea who had been starting to use severe stress in search the win.

Obafemi missed an ideal likelihood to interrupt the impasse when he headed Ryan Manning’s improbable cross over the crossbar with 20 minutes remaining.

Shortly after he prodded large from Wolf’s cross as Swansea seemed each bit like a aspect who had failed to seek out the web in over seven hours on the highway.

The hosts lastly managed a primary shot heading in the right direction on 74 minutes, however substitute Quevin Castro’s shot lacked energy, earlier than Robinson’s intelligent curling effort from 20 yards struck the skin of the publish because the ahead struck the woodwork for the second time.

The miss proved decisive as Swansea lastly discovered a second of high quality with substitute Olivier Ntcham’s run and cross teeing up Piroe, who slammed the ball dwelling from 12 yards.

It was a deserved objective for the Swans they usually made the factors protected when Christie managed and powered the ball into the web after West Brom failed to chop out Wolf’s cross from the left.

West Brom registered only one shot heading in the right direction within the match and boos rang out from the Baggies followers as the ultimate whistle sounded.