Conor Townsend backs West Brom for automatic promotion

With the Championship having now reached its midway point, the Baggies sit fourth in the table, a point behind Blackburn, two points behind Bournemouth and five behind leaders Fulham.

Townsend admits it’s not the position they want to be in – with Valerien Ismael’s side targeting automatic promotion this term.

But the defender – who was part of the Albion side that won promotion under Slaven Bilic – is confident the Baggies will be competing for a place in the top two during the season run-in.

“We’re halfway through the season and we’re still well within a shout of doing what we want to do,” the 28-year-old said. “We had it when we went up. We were eight or nine points clear at this stage of the season.

“In my opinion I don’t think it really matters at this stage of the season.

“Two, three, even five points is nothing in this league.

“It’s all about being in and around it around March time, that’s when the run-in really starts.

“And I think there are a lot of games to be played between now and March and we can really set ourselves up for the run in.”

The reason Blackburn, Bournemouth and Fulham are currently above Albion in the table is they all have clinical centre-forwards.

Aleksandar Mitrovic already has 22 goals for Fulham this term.

Dominic Solanke has 17 for Bournemouth, while Ben Brereton Diaz has 19 for Blackburn.

For Albion, left-sided forward Karlan Grant has managed nine.

But the three players who have tended to play through the middle – Jordan Hugill, Callum Robinson and Matt Phillips – have just eight between them.

And that lack of fire power has led to the Baggies drawing too many games – something that happened again at Barnsley last Friday.

“We know what we need to work on as a team and individually,” Townsend continued. “We need that bit of quality in the final third – we have spoken about killer instinct in front of goal. If we had shown that at Barnsley we would have won the game comfortably in my opinion.

“We had plenty of chances to win the game. Defensively we looked solid, I don’t think they caused us any problems.

“We just needed to take our chances which has been the case for a while now.

“But the effort and the application is there, we’ve just got to dust ourselves down and go again for the Derby game.

“We’re not where want to be at this moment in time but we know what the target is.”

Townsend missed Albion’s game against Reading after testing positive for Covid-19. But he played against Barnsley just 24 hours after coming out of isolation.

The wing-back, though, said he felt good during the game.

“I have been alright to be fair,” he added. “I had a few symptoms start last Monday and then I tested negative all week – then I got to the Thursday and tested positive.

“But I was alright. I have been ticking over in my gym and doing what I could to keep fit.

“I felt alright at Barnsley physically, I felt a little bit rusty on the ball but it was good to get back out there.”