Clarke's Words Fired Me Up - Odemwingie

Peter Odemwingie has said that Steve Clarke's speech before the game fired everybody up for our win against Southampton.

Speaking to wba.co.uk after his brace in last night's game, Odemwingie said the coaches message that 'no good team loses three in a row' was the perfect spur to put our recent disappointments behind us.

'Of course I'm happy. The expectations from our fans are high and even losing against the champions, being disappointed as a team for us means we are getting better and the ambition is there. We are showing a very good quality of football as well so that's where the expectations are coming from.'

Odemwingie says that he believes fans can see the team improving, and individual's improving on a game by game basis, and that importantly our confidence hasn't taken a hit following the two recent losses.

He also believes it was a full hearted performance, especially how we defended at the end, with everybody giving all they could to prove Clarke right.

'You could see in the last minutes we defended with so much concentration. After two disappointing games in a row, the head coach said something that stayed in my head 'no good team loses three in a row'. And what he asked us to do is what we did. Gera was flying everywhere, Foster saved, Jonas tackled. We can really breathe now with relief.'

I probably wasn't alone in wondering if Newcastle was going to be the start of a little rut with how we lost the game, so it was the perfect response against Southampton - both in terms of the result, but also in terms of the performance again.

We know we'll hit a blip at somepoint, but if we keep putting in that kind of effort and playing as we do, we should be able to get ourselves out of any hiccup moments sooner rather than later.

Vital West Brom on:

Vital West Brom on:

Click here to join in the debate on the club forum.