Boss: 'Honest conversations' at West Brom after thrashing but recovery is piece-by-piece with no 'magic switch'

The Baggies were thrashed 5-0 for the heaviest defeat ever on their own turf outside of the top flight in just Ramsay's second game.

And Ramsay has admitted the "elephant in the room" - meaning a battle to climb away from the Championship drop zone - is now at the very front of the Albion squad's focus.

Ramsay, who takes his team to Derby on Friday night after 10 away league defeats in a row under the previous regime, felt talks this week were constructive but added there is no "magic button" that can suddenly lift the club, instead pointing to a process that starts with building confidence and momentum.

"We're very clear in where the group needs to get better, we've had some very honest conversations over the course of the last couple of days," Ramsay said.

"The line is very clear, we fell well beneath that line but it's clear to me where the group needs to go, where we need to improve and the work that needs to be done and the players are in no uncertain terms.

"That's been made clear by us but also by them, they're a group that wants more from each other and that's been very clear over the last two days."

Ramsay added of analysis work that goes into any debrief: "We obviously analyse our performance in real detail, we analyse the opposition in real detail and then we have to decide what reaches the players.

"It's not helpful to over-analyse, that can certainly lead to some paralysis I would say, so we have to be very careful as to where we draw the line there, but also in the same breath I talk about being able to find moments of improvement and individual improvement, multiplying those and that being the basis of confidence."

The new boss, Albion's third appointment in 12 months, has started his reign at The Hawthorns with successive home defeats including that historic thumping by the Canaries.

But the former Minnesota boss maintains he, his staff and players did not see an implosion like Tuesday coming after taking some encouragement from his opener against Middlesbrough last Friday, which ended in last-gasp defeat.

Ramsay said he is not someone to get caught up on statistics but pointed to very tight expected goals (xG) stats - which varied slightly from different sources - in the 5-0 thrashing as to how Norwich's success was about being clinical.

"I want to be very precise as to where I feel the group fell down from an on-pitch perspective but it's also accepting that a lot of the difficulty at the moment comes from the gravity of the situation as a whole," Ramsay said.

"There is the fragility that I'm sure everyone in the stadium could feel and that is also something we've got to address and I think the only way that we do that is starting to build confidence moment by moment.

"There's no magic switch that I can flick that makes the team immediately confident, it's about making sure that we demonstrate behaviours that start to make the team feel confident.

"That starts with game plan, sticking to game plan, playing moment-by-moment and once we start to feel that across enough moments the group starts to become much more confident."

He added when asked on lifting the mood: "There's an element of that but I also feel like it's not a concrete enough thing to grab onto just improving mood.

"I think mood improvement comes through the team feeling more confident, the team being able to demonstrate what it can do at its best.

"There isn't a button that can be pushed to improve mood, there's no magic words that I can find that will improve mood.

"It's not a case of me coming in bouncing, buoyant and energetic, that doesn't change the mood.

"What changes the mood is performance and I know the ingredients that improve performance and that's what I've got to keep pushing."