Webster: I was playing against Chelsea with a smile on my face

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Nick Szczepanik

2025-02-18T06:00+00:00

Adam Webster has made 149 appearances for Albion. 📷 by Paul Hazlewood.

Adam Webster had one of his best games for the club as Albion kept a clean sheet in the 3-0 victory over Chelsea.

And he knew that he had witnessed one of the goals of the season when Kaoru Mitoma put the team ahead after 27 minutes.

“That touch was incredible and he still shoots from outside the box, so he has got a lot to do,” the Sussex-born defender said. “It was an incredible goal, an incredible moment. It just gets better every time [you see it].

"I honestly knew as soon as he cut inside that he was going to score. To be fair, Trevoh Chalobah didn’t really do anything wrong. He was close to him but it was an unbelievable bit of skill. What a goal.”

The entire performance was one to savour, he agreed. “It was really enjoyable. I’ve just said to Welbz [Danny Welbeck] that towards the end, 3-0 up, a couple of times I had a smile on my face, which is not that normal in a professional game like that. So an amazing win and we’re all delighted.

“The gaffer said after the game we deserve it, because of how hard we train and how much work we put in during the week. And then you can see that coming out in the game, Yanny (Yankuba Minteh) sprinting non-stop all night, and he gets his rewards with two goals. If you can sustain that, you have always got a chance. We want to be the most intense team and when you do that we are a tough team to play against.

“If you are tired, you have got to keep going, because if you are not going to do it somebody else will come in and do it for you. It can be tough, but that is a big part of our game. That is what the gaffer has brought in since he joined. You can see when we are out of possession we are intense, win the ball back high up the pitch and go and create chances from it.”

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Kaoru Mitoma's goal against Chelsea was something special. Here is a view of it as seen through the lenses of our club photographers.

Friday evening marked the first time this season that Webster, 30, has completed a full ninety minutes plus added time.

“When I've had injuries it's never one or two weeks, it's always a little bit longer,” he said. “When you come back, you have to build up again and it takes a while. It is super frustrating. This season I got injured in October. I had a setback just before I was training with the boys and that was frustrating, a really low moment for me, because it felt like deja vu.

“Injuries are part of the game. They are always going to be there with how intense the games are and how intense training is. Everyone gets injured. It's how you deal with that and how you bounce back from it.”

Even when sidelined, he has always been praised as a leader by head coach Fabian Hurzeler, so was a natural choice to take the captain’s armband when Danny Welbeck was substituted late in the game.

“I’ve always been a talker on the pitch even when I was young,” Adam said. “Obviously in the summer we lost a couple of big characters, Pascal and Adam Lallana, Billy Gilmour, leaders as well. I feel like us more senior lads have had to step up and I feel like we’ve done that.

“We’ve got like a leadership group with more senior players and we’ve got a lot of young players that we’re trying to help and develop, a lot of new players to the league, so we’ve got to give them time to settle and adapt. For us more senior players it’s important that we set the standards and we drive the culture every day and that’s been a big part for me this year.”