W Brom 1 – 0 Coventry

West Bromwich Albion moved up to fifth in the Sky Bet Championship with a 1-0 win over Coventry City.

Grady Diangana’s 15th-minute strike ensured Carlos Corberan’s side secured their sixth league win and consecutive clean sheets.

Albion have not conceded a goal at home in all competitions for more than 11 hours of football – 697 minutes.

West Brom are good value for getting back to winning ways after Jed Wallace hit the post and missed another chance, while Daryl Dike turned away two chances.

They were forced into an unexpected change with goalkeeper Alex Palmer injured, so someone recalled David Button.

In an open, back-to-back start to the game, there are many chances at both ends.

But the hosts, buoyed by a supply of quality deliveries from debutants Marc Albrighton and Wallace, were the better side.

Dike missed a glorious chance to put Albion in front when he headed home Albrighton’s cross.

Coventry had a chance to punish the mistake soon after, but Viktor Gyökeres could only glance it across the face of goal from center Jamie Allen.

Albion responded with a shot from Wallace, who fired over the bar from the edge of the area.

Wallace almost curled a good move but it hit the base of the post and Diangana just failed to convert the rebound.

But Albion took the lead with a quarter of an hour to play when Diangana made no mistake from close range after Wallace had nodded in a long throw-in from Darnell Furlong.

Wallace then curled comfortably over the line with a first-time effort from a corner before he was just inches away with an angled shot after cutting a pass and heading in from the left.

Albion had their first opening of the second half when Dike cleared through Okay Yokuslu’s pass, but he failed to beat goalkeeper Ben Wilson.

Coventry, who had most of the possession for long spells in the second half, made a substitution treble in the 61st minute with the introductions of Josh Wilson-Esbrand, Josh Eccles and Matty Godden.

But he struggled to break down Albion’s defense which he was not used to conceding in front of the fans.

The Sky Blues threatened with Gustavo Hamer’s free-kick which Button pushed away, but Gyokeres should have done better from the edge of the box as he ran after Allen’s pass.

The managers…

West Brom manager Carlos Corberan: “If you lose a game, you talk about a crisis. If you win a game, you talk about this (top two).

“My mentality is to keep performing well because I know that the better my team performs, the more chances we have to win the game. And the more games we win, the better position we will be in the table.

“To do this we need a positive result and the main way to get a positive result is to have a positive performance. So this is our focus.

“Every time we are in front of our fans, we like to make them proud.

“The idea is to look for results from the first moment to the last. We try to be aggressive in defense and try to play with a lot of personality in attack and be dominant.

“The level of commitment, personality and concentration is very high. That level allowed us to win the game and deserve the result we got. It is the right reaction that is needed and the right mentality to finish the game.

“The second half was different and we couldn’t control it at the same level, but for me with the change, the team is more balanced.”

Coventry manager Mark Robins: “The first half wasn’t good, so whoever plays, you can’t start like that, so it’s disappointing.

“In this league, if you start on the front foot, you can push them, but we didn’t do that.

“They came at us and we didn’t deal with it – we were rude, and there was a ball out from Ben Wilson where we cut it and started playing with our minds.

“It’s a disappointment and a compounded goal. We had one very good chance when we went down the right and put the ball in the box and Viktor Gyokeres was only a few inches away from tapping into an empty net.

“But it wasn’t enough and we talked about it at half-time and we started better.”