Slaven Bilic: West Brom prepared for play-offs should automatic promotion bid fail

The Baggies took on Huddersfield tonight knowing a victory - together with a win over QPR on Wednesday - would have seen them secure promotion to the Premier League.

But Chris Willock - a player who spent the first half of the season on loan at The Hawthorns without making an appearance - put Danny Cowley’s side on the path to victory.

Dara O’Shea levelled for Bilic’s side but Emile Smith Rowe scored late on to break Baggies hearts.

The result means promotion is now in Brentford’s hands with Thomas Frank’s side able to go above Albion in the table if they draw or win against Stoke today.

“It’s hard to talk about it tonight,” Bilic said when asked how Albion move forward after the game.

“At the end of the day, we have two options.

“We can back up and feel sorry for ourselves, and think ‘oh my God this’, ‘oh my God that’ - to moan, to cry, to feel sorry for ourselves.

“We have a more difficult option. We can use this second chance, which thank God we get.

“It’s only a few games. Now we have to find it.

“Are we proper men? Are we a proper team? Proper characters? Or are we only good in the good times?”

Asked if he expects Brentford to slip up against Stoke with the pressure having shifted onto Thomas Frank’s side, Bilic said: “I don’t expect that, to be fair. We will be ready for QPR and play-offs.”

Albion headed to the John Smith’s Stadium having impressed in their last five outings.

And Bilic admitted he was shocked at how his team failed to cope with the pressure of the occasion.

“I did not see that coming,” the head coach continued.

“We simply weren’t good enough. We were poor at everything.

“We can’t blame luck or whatever - we can’t blame anybody but ourselves.

“We were not good at defending, we were not good physically, we were not good at second “balls, we were not good at passing the ball.

“We were not good at creating anything. We were simply not good enough from the start to the end.

“We can give them credit, they also felt pressure. They had big pressure on them also. But they looked like they were fighting for their lives.

“From the outside, it looked like they wanted it more, which isn’t the case.

“We crumbled under the pressure, why we did it - I really don’t know.

“I tried to ease the pressure and help them cope with the pressure but that obviously wasn’t good enough. But of course, the guys wanted it.”

Unhappy with what he was seeing at half-time in Yorkshire, Bilic made a double change with Filip Krovinovic and Kamil Grosicki replacing Jake Livermore and Matt Phillips.

A lot of supporters questioned the decision to take off skipper Livermore.

But Bilic explained his reasoning: “I wasn’t happy with the first half. They didn’t have chances but we didn’t either so I wasn’t happy with the performance.

“I wanted to liven the team up and I wanted to win the game so I put a couple of players on to hurt them more and get better passing from Filip, but sometimes we looked like some moves were there but not in waves like we wanted before the game to take the ball at them in their own half.

“It was too nervous."