“There are lessons to be learned…”: George Hirst claims

Town striker George Hirst feels there are lessons to be gained after the Blues’ 2-0 loss to West Bromwich Albion, and admits the better team triumphed on a difficult evening at the Hawthorns.

Darnell Furlong and Grady Diangana scored early in both half to hand Town its second league defeat of the season and their first away from home in 17 outings.

Furlong’s goal came after only five minutes, marking the Blues’ sixth consecutive game in which they have conceded the first goal, all of which have come within the first 15 minutes.

However, Hirst argues that the principles of how the goals are being achieved are more essential than the timeliness of them.

“It’s one of those things, I don’t think we had a bad start,” he told reporters. “A lot of people will see it as ‘we’ve conceded early again,’ but for us, it’s more about conceding from the set piece than the actual start.”

“It’s something we value, and we take pride in our ability to emerge unscathed from such situations.” Today they score, and it’s back up the mountain. It’s not ideal, but I believe they were the better team.

“It’s a tough league, we know we’re going to lose games, and it’s not a life or death situation.” Right now, it’s one of those situations where we’ve been beaten today by probably the better team, and we’ll attempt to make amends on Wednesday.”

Despite not being a major concern, Hirst stated that surrendering early is something that the squad recognizes needs to be improved, and cited the Baggies as a team from which the Blues can learn.

“I think that’s a fair reflection,” he remarked. We’re working on it, and we’re talking about it; we’re not blind to it. It’s something we’re confident we’ll get a handle on and improve at.

“It’s a lesson learned for us, especially in this division where you can’t give yourself those kinds of things to come back from all the time, and today we couldn’t do it.”

“They’re one of those teams where you know they’re an experienced side with good players all over the pitch when you come into it.” It was going to be a difficult game, so we don’t need to make it any more difficult for ourselves.

“There were times when we put them on the back foot and played some good football.” Tactically, we caused them issues at times, but we couldn’t capitalize on it, which was unfortunate.

“Like I say it’s a lesson learned and we’ll improve on it going forward.”

The defeat ended the Blues’ 12-game unbeaten league record, while it was the first time Town had failed to score since February, when they had scored in 35 consecutive games.

“It’s not something that happens every week,” Hirst added, referring to the lack of forward impetus. “It was a bit of a surprise for us, and we want to improve.” It is up to us as a group to go out and generate opportunities.

“It’s up to us as a forward unit to go out and cause them problems and put their keeper in danger, and we didn’t do that today.” We’ll return to the practice field on Monday morning and take a look at ourselves first, and then move from there.”

Town are still second in the Championship table, seven points ahead of third-placed Leeds United, a good position to be in after 17 games.

“We’re not taking our position for granted,” added Hirst. “It’s been a lot of hard work to get here, and it’ll be even harder work to stay there.” It’s about keeping this going and maintaining the energy between us.

“We’ve lost today but it’s not going to define our season, we’re going to get ready on Monday morning and all focus is towards Millwall.”

“You’ve got games every two or three days, especially in December,” he continued. The good news is that we still have time to make things right.

“I know the lads are disappointed on the inside, but come Monday morning, all attention will be on Millwall.” It’s an opportunity to make things right, and hopefully we’ll take advantage of it.

“There’s 46 games and we’re going to need every single player in the squad whether you’re starting every week or starting a little bit less than you would like. All the boys are focused, all the boys are ready to take this opportunity when it comes and that’s how it should be.”

With nine more matches to come before New Year’s Day, including against Norwich City, Leeds and Leicester City, Hirst says the upcoming run is a period the team are relishing.

The 24-year-old said: “They’re the games you want to be playing in and the teams you want to be playing against. The fact that they’re all going to mean something is even bigger. For us it’s one game at a time, we’ve got big teams to play and there’s going to be a lot of tough games this month.

“As long as the fans are behind us like they are every single week, you can’t fault them travelling in numbers again tonight. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get the result for them today, but they’re going to be there every game we play. Hopefully we can keep doing them proud.”

The former Leicester City man also spoke on fellow striker Dane Scarlett, the Tottenham Hotspur loanee having found game time difficult to come by in his spell at Portman Road so far.

Hirst said: “He’s getting on really well, he’s fitted into the group really well. He shows his quality in training with his finishing and stuff like that.

“With the run we’ve been on at the minute it’s a hard team to get into, which is natural so it’s been tough for not only him but the other boys who haven’t been starting. But he’s doing well, fitted in and all the boys can see the talent that he’s got. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before he starts knocking [on the door].”