Steve Clarke has defended his decision to play Romelu Lukaku instead of Shane Long in West Brom’s defeat to Newcastle at the weekend.
Long, who has scored three goals in the Premier League for the Baggies so far this season, was left on the bench, much to the surprise of some onlookers.
This questioning of Clarke’s decision was heightened as Lukaku, who is playing for the club on loan from Chelsea, missed a host of chances before scoring West Brom’s only goal of the game.
In response, Clarke admitted that the Long did not deserve to get put on the bench, but reiterated that he has many good strikers at the club and thought it was the right time for a change.
“Romelu hasn’t played from the start for a number of weeks. I have a fantastic replacement in Shane Long. Shane has been fantastic for us and didn’t really deserve to be on the bench, but sometimes when you have so many good strikers, you have to make decisions,” he said.
“I thought it was the right change. We were the best team going forward, and we only lost because of a late deflection. We didn’t deserve it. If he’d scored the other two, he’d have put me even more right.”
“When you have a squad of players you can’t keep disappointing them all of the time. Romelu has been a good sub for us, and every now and again, he’ll get a chance to play. Yesterday he got that chance. Shane usually gets the nod and he’s normally the one coming off – because playing as a lone striker is a difficult shift – but I felt yesterday I wanted to reverse it.”
Clarke says that he thought that how the side played and the team’s performance was positive adding, “Because of the result it’ll be looked at as a negative, but I thought in terms of the performance and the way we played it was a positive.”
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