Swedish rock Jonas Olsson has told his teammates they must do the basics right if they are to return to winning action against Reading on Saturday (KO 3pm). Di Matteo’s men have picked up just a solitary point in a possible nine after back-to-back defeats against Crystal Palace and Barnsley in the space of a week.
The Baggies bounced back with a respectable draw at Deepdale against Preston before the international break with Olsson plotting a way for second-place Albion to return to winning ways.
"If you look at recent games - at Arsenal away, even if they didn't play their best team, I think we were right at them first-half and then we had a man sent off.
"Then the next game, against Crystal Palace at home, we didn't play our best.
"But I don't think we deserved to lose that one, we lost by a scrappy goal, 1-0.
"I think Barnsley is the only game that we performed really badly and deserved to lose.
"I think it's just part of a season of 46 games, you cannot win them all.
"Obviously we have to perform better than we did against Barnsley but I'm sure there are going to be games like that all season.
"Next month we could play in a game like the Crystal Palace one and we may win 1-0.
"I think in the long term those type of games even out.
"The thing we have to do is to look at the Barnsley game and try and improve from that.
"I think it is expected that you are going to lose games but the way we lost against Barnsley is not acceptable.
"You know in 46 games you are going to lose a few but you can lose in different ways and you're always going to have bad days, football-wise and technical-wise, when passing doesn't feel right - like against Barnsley.
"We didn't do the basic work that had to be done and that's not acceptable and not something that I think will happen again this season."