It's a do or die game but we're confident, says Pascal Gross

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Midfielder looks ahead to tonight's UEFA Conference League play-off against Tromso

Nick Szczepanik

2026-08-27T06:00+01:00

Albion are aware of the threats Tromso will pose in tonight's second leg. 📷James Boardman

Pascal Gross believes that the Albion players will go into the home leg of the Europa Conference League tie against Tromso in confident mood after beating Aston Villa 4-0 on Sunday.

But, in what the Germany playmaker called a “do-or-die” game, they will also be wary of what the team from Norway threatened to do on the break in last Thursday’s first-leg goalless draw.

“We saw in the second half that they're really dangerous on counter-attacks,” Pascal said.

“We need to be careful. We need to attack, but we need to be good at rest defence as well. That will be key.

“We need to take our opportunities. We need to score. We're at home with our fans.

It's a totally different game, totally different environment for them as well. Therefore, I'm really positive.

“This is a do-or-die game. In these games, there's no excuses. You don't have another chance to do it again, so we just need to find the right balance between attack and defence.

"It's a game of 90 minutes or longer. Stay calm, but also we're at home and we're strong and we should really believe in ourselves.

"We saw on the weekend what we're capable of. We have our crowd and we're also really confident that we can go to the next round.

“They are a very disciplined team, defensive with a lot of players behind the ball, good in transition.

"But in the end we should also have the belief and confidence to say if we play our game, if we bring our intensity, our physicality on the pitch, if we have a good structure in possession, if we play simple, if we play fast, if we attack the box well, then I think we're also a team that's difficult to beat.

“The game at home against Villa I think was really impressive, the intensity we brought in, the way we defended, the way we attacked.

“Last year it was very hard to finish eighth in the Premier League. It's a tough league and we don't want to waste that.

"We're in Europe. We want to qualify and give our fans another European tour, home and away. Therefore, we need to do the job on Thursday.”