Bruce picks out positives from Hawthorns disappointment

By Paul Chialton

It can be difficult sometimes to look at the positives from a disappointing result like that against West Brom, but Steve Bruce had no problem praising the efforts of Hugo Rodallega, who was a bright spark for Wigan all afternoon at the Hawthorns.

Scoring his first goal for Latics from a first-half free-kick, Rodallega was busy throughout the game and although there are concerns that Wigan's goal return could be better Bruce had nothing but praise for his Colombian striker:

"I'm absolutely delighted with Hugo (Rodallega).

"Ideally I would have only just started to play him now, but our situation has been such that he's been needed a lot sooner.

"I wanted to give him time to adjust and settle into a new lifestyle, but instead he's been thrown in at the deep end which has been difficult for him.

"However, he's shown today that he's a really, really good player and in the first-half he played extremely well with Olivier (Kapo) up-front."

Another plus-point for the gaffer was the performance of substitute goalkeeper Richard Kingson, who replaced Chris Kirkland early on in the game and looked confident in goal, producing a string of good saves and impressing Bruce:

"Richard (Kingson) has waited patiently for his opportunity and I was delighted with his performance.

"He did extremely well and it was frustrating for him that is penalty save went straight back to their player to score. That incident summed up our afternoon really, it simply wasn't going to be our day."

Bruce was understandably unhappy with the outcome of the game but did take solace in the fact that the team are playing good football and have a big game on Wednesday night to look forward to:

"I'm a little disappointed that we're not finishing the season in top form, because there isn't a lot wrong with how we're playing, we just need to start scoring.

"It's the third game in a row that the opposition goalkeeper has been man of the match, and it's certainly our Achilles heel the fact that we can't convert our opportunities into goals.

"Having said that I thought we played some excellent football in the first-half and should have been out-of-sight by half-time. But if you don't take your chances at this level you get punished.

"We've got Man Utd to look forward to on Wednesday now, so it's a big chance for us to put things right again."