Ally Robertson: Key to West Brom making the top six is giving nothing silly away

There are 13 league games left beginning tomorrow, it’s more important now than ever that Albion can be as tight as possible and give nothing away in this play-off chase.

Oh how we needed that win over Middlesbrough badly!

Boro have been in great form under Michael Carrick and had so much possession, about 70 per cent, but they were doing what we did under Brucey.

Their recent form showed just how good they can be, but we stepped up and totally limited them.

Their quality in the last third, balls into the box, was abysmal. Had they had John Swift or Jed Wallace on their team I think they would have beaten us.

Those two were excellent playing behind the striker and helped us find those important goals that took the game away from the visitors.

For us to score two early goals through our centre-forward Daryl Dike, out of very little, and to give nothing away was absolutely brilliant, especially after some of the results we have had away from The Hawthorns.

We got those two early goals and it set us up perfectly, how many times has it been us to have give those away? It continued our fantastic home form, which has been just exceptional.

The only home game we haven’t won of late, against Blackburn a couple of weeks ago, we did enough to win before Josh Griffiths was beaten on his debut late on.

I was pleased he was able to secure that first clean sheet against Boro.

While our home form has been absolutely brilliant, Carlos Corberan and his team have lost a few games now away from home.

That is definitely something we need to address and improve on, starting at Hull tomorrow night.

It can happen, you can get on these runs, confidence and momentum quickly builds when winning in front of your own fans. But away from home is where the defending has to be good – to be solid and give nothing away.

Look at the 3-2 at Watford recently, we gave three silly goals away.

The thing that pleased me most about Dike’s double last weekend was how we scored them from nothing.

It was great to see the big man up front find the net on both occasions, I’m hoping now that it boosts his confidence for the remainder of the season. And if we can keep going at home as we are, then that will be just the job. Looking at the Championship table, there are loads of teams within five or six points of each other.

So if we can have two or three wins on the trot then that would be brilliant.

Our next run of four games is against teams towards the bottom end of the table – but that can be a horrible thing to see as there have been struggles against sides like that.

But it gives us a great chance to get back into the top six now we’ve entered March.

I’m hoping to see us not give any silly goals away.