Adam Lallana has said that an extended break from Europe gives Albion a great opportunity to get back to their best.
That was backed up by the 4-2 win over Spurs on Thursday, which came seven days after Roberto De Zerbi’s team’s most recent outing.
“That's why it was so important we finished top of the group [in the Europa League], you can kind of psychologically park European football for the best part of three months,” Lallana explained.
“I still think we're in a fantastic position in the league. We would have probably taken our current league position (eighth0 and to qualify at the group as winners at this point. But of course we've lost points from good positions especially at home, so that's been disappointing.
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“But there's time to make them points back up. Against the big teams we've picked up great results. Big scalps.
“It's probably more so against the lesser teams that we haven't been deadly enough and it might be psychological, off the back of Europa League games when it's different. It's something new the team is experiencing.
“When we played Arsenal they had a couple of extra days to prepare [more than us]. The Premier League is so physical nowadays it's hard to get time to train always because there's so many games you just have to recover from.”
The next thing in Adam’s eyes that Albion need to make improvements in is their mentality.
“If you want to make that next step where you're competing in Europe and you're competing in the league, you need to find that mentality – it's not technical, it's not physical.
“It's just that mental side where you've got different teams, young players, just to kill and be ruthless. You can only get that by learning when you've got players that haven't experienced it before. So we're improving, but there's still big strides and a lot more we can give.”