West Bromwich Albion put back to back defeats behind them as we welcomed Preston North End to The Hawthorns for Saturday’s Championship action.
Having lost the last two, this game had extra riding on it given the head coach speculation surrounding Alex Neil, and it seemed to have counted in our favour as they were below par, and we stepped our attacking game up.
On loan Newcastle United striker Dwight Gayle helped himself to a hattrick on the day, and Jay Rodriguez also got himself on the score sheet. Sadly we couldn’t keep the clean sheet to top the day off, but a 4-1 win was a step in the right direction again.
Statistics website Whoscored had some great player ratings after that performance and their star man award and Man of the Match went to hattrick hero Gayle with a score of 9.83.
Completing the top five best performers were Rodriguez (8.59), Chris Brunt (8.08), Kyle Bartley (7.74) and Stefan Johansen (7.26).
Also with plus-seven scores from the day were Ahmed Hegazi, Mason Holgate and Craig Dawson.
A much needed victory.