Roy Hodgson saw lightening strike twice at The Hawthorns after Norwich’s second smash-and-grab raid in the space of two weeks.
The Canaries matched the 2-1 scoreline they left the Black Country with following the league game 14 days ago after goals from Grant Holt and Simeon Jackson knocked the Baggies out of the FA Cup
Albion enjoyed long spells of possession in the fourth round tie but fell behind in the 35th minute when Grant Holt tapped home from close range.
The Baggies rallied after the break and Marc Antonie Fortune levelled the scores nine minutes into the second half.
But, with Albion pushing forward for a winner, Jackson capitalised on Craig Dawson’s error to send the Canaries into the next round.
"It's sad to lose because I don't think our performance warranted a defeat," Roy Hodgson said.
"We asked them lots of questions throughout the second half.
"If you reflect on the footballing activity in this match, it was far more in their penalty area than in ours.
"But this game isn't about how many times you get in the opposing team's penalty area.
"It's about how many goals you score. They scored two and we scored one so you end up losing.
"Of course, we feel a little hard done by in that respect, but we've got to do more.
"We've got to make more of the opportunities we do create.
"Against teams that are going to put a lot of players behind the ball and defend in numbers, you're not going to get one-on-ones with their goalkeeper, and that type of clear opportunity.
"You're going to get opportunities to do something when the ball is bouncing around in the opposition's penalty area."
Albion haven't won a league game at The Hawthorns since November and Hodgson feels the poor run of results is becoming a real burden.
"Today was déjà-vu.”
The defeat continued Albion’s disappointing run of form at The Hawthorns. Hodgson admits the defeat followed a similar run of misfortune in front of the goal for the Baggies and believes a victory will end a dismal run of form at B71.
"It's followed an incredible pattern of league games where you've done more than enough during the 90 minutes with your play to get a positive result and you come away with nothing at all, due to some occurrence in the game which you could have easily avoided,” he added.
"Today is part of a hoodoo we seem to be suffering from. We needed a victory to dispel it.
"We didn't get it, so the hoodoo continues.
"Our home results have been very, very poor.
"We seem to be getting nothing at all out of our home performances - and that's a bit difficult to stomach.
"It would be easier if we were playing badly, allowing the opposition to have lots of goal chances and were dependent on our goalkeeper making save after save.”
"But for large periods of all of those games, our goalkeeper has been nothing more than a passenger, really, and yet he still has had to take the ball out of his net more times than the opposition.
"There's nothing I can really say that changes that. Feeling sorry for ourselves isn't going to help."
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Source: FOOTYMAD
