Carlos Corberan felt West Brom were denied an “obvious” penalty in their goalless Championship draw at Blackburn.
The Baggies are experiencing their longest winless run under Corberan, a sequence of five matches, but they are three unbeaten and restricted Rovers to very little, while creating superb first-half chances that full-backs Darnell Furlong and Torbjorn Heggem spurned.
But the major talking point came midway through the second half when Furlong got in behind Todd Cantwell in the area but John Busby was unmoved and the visitors had to settle for a point.
They moved up to fourth and though Corberan thought it was a spot-kick, he also praised his team’s display.
He said: “I think the action of the penalty, live, Furlong received a foul. A foul in the box, it’s a penalty.
“Because he was in the position and the defender (Cantwell) makes a foul to avoid the finishing of Furlong. In these actions, the referee didn’t understand enough probably to issue a penalty.
“It has not been a penalty because the referee didn’t whistle. But live, it was an obvious one.
“Probably the fair result. I think that we had to put an unbelievable level of effort to achieve a point. I think we had possibilities to score the goal.
“In general, I value a lot the effort that the players had tonight to achieve the point.
“We had more possibilities. More times the ball in the opponent’s box where we have to use it better. But we didn’t do it. But the team has put in a lot of effort and competitiveness to achieve the point.”
Rovers remain sixth after claiming their fifth clean sheet in seven games.
They missed a glorious second-half chance through Yuki Ohashi.
Boss John Eustace said: “Obviously coming up against one of the top teams in the league and I felt we held our own, gave a really good account of ourselves and delighted to keep another clean sheet.
“I think that’s five now, so that’s pleasing. We showed some good quality at times as well against a really well drilled team defensively and as I say, I was very pleased with the effort.
“It was a good point. I think both teams had a good go at it and tried to break the defences down.
“They had a couple of really good chances in the first half, probably from us not doing our jobs properly but apart from that, I think we limited them to half chances.
“In the second half, we had a great chance with Yuki going through but overall I think a draw was a fair result.”
