With Valerien Ismael’s West Bromwich Albion side heading into Saturday’s Championship clash with Fulham coming off the back of a highly impressive 3-0 victory over Bristol City, the Frenchman would have undoubtedly been hoping for yet another positive result and performance at Craven Cottage.
However, an Aleksandar Mitrovic hat-trick ensured that the 56-year-old and his Baggies side left west London empty-handed, falling four points behind their opponents in the race for a top-two finish come the end of the season.
As is perhaps to be expected after such a result, a number of West Brom players did not turn in the finest performance of their careers this afternoon, with Darnell Furlong (who was sent off), Semi Ajayi and Sam Johnstone all receiving SofaScore match ratings of 6.2 or less.
However, it was the performance of Matt Clarke which was perhaps the most worrying, with the centre-back undoubtedly hoping to put his display behind him as quickly as possible.
Lost 66% of his duels
Over the course of his 90 minutes on the pitch, the £2.7m-rated defender endured a rather torrid time, making just one tackle, one clearance and two interceptions and blocking one shot.
The Brighton loanee also won just two of his six attempted duels – a failure rate of 66% – was dribbled past by an opponent on two separate occasions and gave away possession 14 times.
Further still, the £21k-per-week man also made one error leading to a shot, when he played a free-kick across the face of his own goal straight to the feet of Neeskens Kebano, who shot just wide – an incident that journalist Steve Madeley dubbed a “howler”.
Indeed, Clarke’s returns saw him earn a very disappointing SofaScore match rating of 5.9, with no player from either team receiving a lower score.
As such, both Ismael and Clarke himself will undoubtedly be hoping that the centre-back’s level of performance improves quickly, or else West Brom could find themselves falling out of the race for a top two finish altogether.
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