West Bromwich Albion manager Tony Mowbray was full of praise for his strikers Luke Moore and Roman Bednar after they scored rare goals in what could prove to be a priceless 2-1 victory over fellow strugglers Manchester City at The Hawthorns.
Bednar struck in injury time to earn all three points after Felipe Caicedo had cancelled out Moore’s first goal for Albion.
“Time will tell how important it was for Luke,” said the Albion boss. “We’re delighted for him. He’s had a difficult time here and hopefully that’s the monkey off his back.
“It’s an important goal. In a week where we’ve talked about transfer windows and strikers coming in, for both of my strikers to score is perhaps the spirit we needed from them, to step up to the plate and get the job done.
“If we do bring new strikers in in January then they (the new strikers) may find themselves on the bench if the lads are doing the job.
“It is important that supporters believe that as well and we all stick together. We could easily have had three points as well against Portsmouth and Blackburn and yet today things went for us a little bit.
“When we were 1-0 up, I was going to try to protect the lead by playing one up front and the intention was to take off Roman.
“But then Jonathan [Greening] said he had double vision and was struggling to see so he had to come off instead.
“Maybe that twist of fate, with Roman scoring the winner in the 92nd minute, is what we need.”
The result piled the pressure on City manager Mark Hughes, who nevertheless insists he has been given the backing of club owner Sheikh Mansour and chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak that he will be at the helm to embark on a January spending spree in the transfer market.
Hughes said: “They have been very positive.”
