De Cuyper: Let's stay humble

Albion ace is aware of the noise around qualifying for the Champions League but insists it's business as usual for the squad.

Nick Szczepanik

2026-11-10T06:00+00:00

Maxim De Cuyper surges forward during Sunday's win over Brentford.

Maxim De Cuyper admits that the Albion squad are aware of talk on social media about the team achieving Champions League qualification or better.

But he insists that the players are concentrating on continuing to do the things that have elevated them to second place in the Premier League going into the international break.

“I think it's impossible to not see those kinds of things if you have social media yourself,” he said. “The only thing we say to each other is that everyone has to stay humble and do his job 100%.

“It's going pretty well, we’ve made a very good start. Like we said some weeks ago, it's about us. We have to do the basics right and everything is possible then.

“It obviously makes it easier when you win games, to do this effort over and over again. You know what you're doing is right and you just keep on doing those things that have got you the results.

“But we said it already to each other, if things are not going our way, we still have to keep on doing it. In the season you have difficult moments so we will definitely meet them and then we have to show how strong we are as a team.”

In one online show, former Manchester United and England midfield player Paul Scholes praised ‘a level of coaching I’d not seen anything like before’ after observing Albion training last week at Salford City’s ground between the two matches away to Manchester City.

“I would say it's just there's a positive vibe with training,” Max said. “Everyone is just doing the effort that is needed on training to be prepared for big games like last week City away and we try to do just our best at training so that's it.”

He has now joined up with the Belgium squad for Nations League matches away to Turkey and at home to Italy.

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Another wonder strike from Diego Gomez set Albion on the road to victory. Pascal Gross calmly doubled that lead from the penalty spot before half time. Albion dominated for long periods, and go into the international break with only Arsenal above them in the Premier League. Club photographers Paul Hazlewood, James Boardman and Simon Roe were on hand to capture all the action from the first home game following a run of five consecutive away fixtures.

“It's a nice mental break now,” he said. “For sure it's nice to see people from your own country, also some friends and to speak your own language. It's very nice to go back to the national team, have a great time, have some playing time there and then come back with a good mood to go on in the Premier League.”

And of course he leaves after playing his part in the latest victory, 2-0 at home to Brentford. “They have some guys with a lot of speed up front so that was the only thing we had to be aware of and I think in general we did that pretty well,” Max said.

And Diego Gomez’s spectacular opening goal?

“For the moment we just have to give him the ball around the penalty area and he will shoot balls into the net. It's unbelievable the goals he's scoring this season, so I hope it keeps on coming.”