Wieffer: We still need to fine tune

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Netherlands international reflects on start to the campaign.

Nick Szczepanik

2024-11-19T06:00+00:00

Mats Wieffer joined Albion from Feyenoord in the summer. 📷 by Paul Hazlewood.

It has been a frustrating start to the season for Mats Wieffer, but the Netherlands international midfield player is confident of adapting to a new country, new club and new league.

After recovering from the thigh problem that kept him out of Euro 2024, he started Albion’s 3-0 victory at Everton in the opening game of the season, but then further injury ruled him out of the next three games.

He is back in his national team squad, but has found it tricky to regain a starting place in the Albion side - five of his seven Premier League appearances have come off the bench, which brings its own challenges.

The midfielder previously spent two years with Feyenoord. 📷 by Paul Hazlewood.

“Everybody is always telling you [English football is] really high intensity so it’s what I expected before,” he said. “But sometimes, especially if you come on in the middle of the game you feel as if it’s going really fast. If you start the game, you come into the rhythm more, but if you come on after sixty minutes, especially like at Liverpool, you really feel the intensity is high, you’re going up and down.

“You come in and it’s the heat of the moment so you have to be there mentally straight away, that’s the main thing. Also in the last few games when that happened I had to defend a lot, against Newcastle and Tottenham we were in front when I came on so you have to cover and run a lot, but if that’s what I have to do then I’ll do it.

“Of course I have to adapt a bit more and maybe it needs more time, I don’t know. Also the playing style is a little different from what I’m used to so I have to get better at some of the principles that we have as a team. We talk about it and we train together for it so it’s getting better already.”

Mats Wieffer celebrates with Evan Ferguson. 📷 by Paul Hazlewood.

One thing the former Dutch league winner with Feyenoord has learned quickly is that there are very few easy games at this level. “Yes, that’s true,” he said. “With us you see that we played against teams who are big teams on paper and we took the points and at home against maybe the lower-table teams, or who were lower-table before, we dropped points so you can see that there’s no easy games here.

“If you make a mistake they punish you directly. So that’s maybe something we have to improve as well as a team, to stay calm in those moments. I think until now we have had some good games and we play good football and we just have to fine-tune it a little bit.”

If the fans have been frustrated by certain results, then that counts double for the squad. “Yes, of course. We talk about it a lot, what we can do better and staying calm to manage the game more. We are a young team and we don’t have that many experienced players and we have to maybe delay the game a little, slow the pace a little bit. So yes, we speak about it but we have to do it ourselves.”