First-half goals from Anis Mehmeti and Ross McCrorie helped Bristol City climb into the Sky Bet Championship play-off zone with a 2-1 victory over West Brom at The Hawthorns.<\/p>\n
Ousmane Diakite pulled one back in the 85th minute but Albion struggled to create chances once City had taken the lead.<\/p>\n
Back-to-back wins for City saw Albion suffer a first Hawthorns defeat in eight matches and successive losses.<\/p>\n
City opened the scoring in the fourth minute after Albion winger Mikey Johnston’s deflected drive went into the side-netting.<\/p>\n
Mehmeti rolled a shot on the turn into the bottom corner from 20 yards after Neto Borges’ short pass for his seventh goal of the season.<\/p>\n
But it will spark fresh criticism of goalkeeper Joe Wildsmith, who looked as if he thought the Albania international’s effort was drifting wide.<\/p>\n
There was an element of fortune around the goal as a City forward standing offside jumped over the ball but was deemed to be not interfering with play.<\/p>\n
Albion head coach Ryan Mason appealed in vain to the fourth official.<\/p>\n
Isaac Price missed the perfect chance to equalise in the 11th minute.<\/p>\n
The attacking midfielder’s shot hit goalkeeper Max O’Leary’s chest in a one-against-one after Karlan Grant put him through.<\/p>\n
O’Leary was again perfectly placed soon after to block Diakite’s point-blank header from Callum Styles’ corner.<\/p>\n
There was a flashpoint when Mehmeti was only booked after appearing to elbow Styles in the face as he upended him.<\/p>\n
The challenge left Albion down to 10 men while Styles was briefly forced off for treatment clutching his nose.<\/p>\n
McCrorie doubled City’s lead in the 22nd minute, crashing a fierce, rising angled drive past Wildsmith at his near post after Scott Twine found him unmarked.<\/p>\n
Grant had the first effort after the restart but O’Leary was again in the right place to smother his low drive from the edge of the box.<\/p>\n
Grant had another chance but his fierce, angled effort was deflected high over the bar.<\/p>\n
Albion fans were getting restless and made their feelings known just after the hour.<\/p>\n
Aune Heggebo wasted a glorious chance to reduce the deficit in the 68th minute when he glanced wide from five yards from substitute Sammy Iling-Junior’s cross.<\/p>\n
Heggebo looped over another header but by this time thousands of Albion fans had seen enough and had exited the ground.<\/p>\n
Diakite gave the hosts a lifeline with a header from point-blank range from Johnston’s corner but the visitors saw out the game.<\/p>\n
The managers<\/p>\n
West Brom’s Ryan Mason:<\/p>\n
“I am not going to sit here and ask for patience. It’s normal. That’s football. I understand the emotion and the passion.<\/p>\n
“If we score three of our five opportunities then the feeling, the momentum and the energy is different.<\/p>\n
“We’ve lost too many games and with that comes frustration. I have played for one of the biggest teams in Europe in Tottenham and the only way to turn it around is to win games.<\/p>\n
“I have managed Tottenham when there were protests against the ownership, talk of the Super League, there was a lot of discontent.<\/p>\n
“There were two massive mistakes by the referee. The first goal was clearly offside in my opinion. Joe (Wildsmith) would have saved it if their striker hadn’t been there – you only had to look at the foot pattern of our goalkeeper.”<\/p>\n
“[On Mehmeti’s challenge] Five yards from the referee, an opposition player has produced a really dangerous, reckless challenge with his elbow which caused a lot of damage and there’s no consequence.”<\/p>\n
Bristol City’s Gerhard Struber:<\/p>\n
“I have not seen a clip, but if it is offside, then I feel sorry. But a video assistant would help.<\/p>\n
“It was a really efficient performance in the first half and Anis’ strike was really clean. This is the quality of him.<\/p>\n
“I expect this from him. He has everything – he has the talent and the quality to do it at a high level.<\/p>\n
“We showed a really good mindset from the kick-off to win this game and a confidence, which was the difference.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"First-half goals from Anis Mehmeti and Ross McCrorie helped Bristol City climb into the Sky Bet Championship play-off…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":337671,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-337670","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/337671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}