Having won their opening three games under Jimmy Shan, West Brom looked like they could be about to relaunch a bid for the automatic promotion places.

But following those wins against Swansea, Brentford and Birmingham, the Baggies crashed back down to Earth on Saturday, losing 2-0 to relegation threatened Millwall at the Den.

[ad_pod ]

After a tepid opening half-an-hour, Ryan Tunnicliffe fired the homeside in front, driving a low shot under the despairing Sam Johnstone, who should have done better.

And, moments after Jay Rodriguez had wasted a penalty to level the scores, t was 2-0 just when Ben Thompson’s cut back ricocheted into the back of the net off West Brom defender Ahmed Hegazy just after the hour mark.

Things got worse for the Egyptian too when he saw red with just ten minutes of the match remaining after picking up a second yellow.

It was a thoroughly disappointing result for the Baggies and Shan who now find themselves seven points adrift of the top two.

Here are THREE things we learned about them from the defeat…

Two man team

West Brom wasted a lot of chances at the Den on Saturday and it served to emphasise just how important the front two are.

As soon as they are off their game, they have very few other players who are capable of stepping up and finding the net.

Under pressure

Despite their recent victories, the players seemed to still have a lot of pressure on them.

Perhaps the disgruntlement among the fans is starting to weigh heavily on them, but either way there were a lot of individual mistakes from players you would not expect it from.

Moore sacking a mistake

This result simply emphasised what a bad idea it was to get rid of Moore, especially when they did.

It has clearly disrupted the squad and Shan is clearly not up to the task. The best chance they had of making the top two was sticking with Moore and they have thrown that away now.