West Brom v Middlesbrough - Match preview

Saturday’s defeat at Sheffield Wednesday – totally overshadowed by the devastating death of Albion fan Mark Townsend – was a first reverse of the season.

Tonight’s home clash against Middlesbrough offers the Albion family a chance to remember and pay tribute to Mark, who was a Brummie Road season ticket holder visiting Hillsborough with his 21-year-old nephew. There will be a minute’s applause in the 57th minute and black armbands worn.

On the pitch, it offers Corberan’s side a first shot at responding from a significant setback.

Saturday’s seventh league game of the season brought a first defeat after five wins from the previous six. At Hillsborough, Albion were well below the high standards they had set in the first six games. Wednesday’s 2-0 half-time lead was deserved.

The Baggies rallied and, to their real credit, pulled it back to 2-2, but there could have been few real complaints when the Owls nicked all three points moments later.

“In football it is not about losing games, it is about the reaction to losing the game,” Corberan said. “It is important for us as a team, we want to go again tonight.

“After Saturday it looked like Tuesday was in one month’s time because of the feeling of the defeat made you think just about Saturday and not this one.

“But we need to learn to digest the feeling and use the pain to go again full of desire, not just to win, but to show what we are on the pitch, because that is for me the most important thing.”

Corberan, perhaps, has the biggest starting line-up conundrum of the season yet, though will probably be guided by the fitness of his midfield after Alex Mowatt and Jayson Molumby were deemed not ready to start on Saturday.

The former came on at half-time for struggling full debutant Ousmane Diakite and helped turn the tide.

But the head coach may decide to shuffle his pack otherwise with several players, both in attack and defence, knocking on the door for a first start of the season. On the other hand, Corberan may decide his players can go again after one poor half this season.

“The level of pain that I have and my players have now is huge because of course it is the first defeat,” added the head coach.

“You cannot be thinking you are not going to be having defeats in the Championship, but at the same time we wanted to extend the good momentum of the team and the way we achieved the defeat was after we made a difficult thing (to equalise) – but the thing we didn’t do is be ourselves in the first half.

“We played with too much respect and I need to see why we put a lot of respect to them, or didn’t play well enough because as a team we competed below our level and individually too, we need to find solutions.”