West Brom boss Bilic vows to keep voicing his opinion despite red card at Derby

West Brom manager Slaven Bilic vowed to keep on speaking out despite being sent off for protesting in his side’s 1-1 draw at Derby.

Bilic voiced his anger after Derby were awarded a controversial penalty and was dismissed near the end for another protest over a decision.

It was a busy afternoon for referee Gavin Ward who awarded the first of three penalties when Martyn Waghorn was tripped by Kieran Gibbs.

Waghorn tucked away the spot-kick on that occasion but the striker was not successful with his next one in the 43rd minute after assistant Mark Pottage decided Filip Krovinovic had handled Lee Buchanan’s cross.

Replays showed it had hit his shoulder but after Bilic was booked for protesting, Sam Johnstone dived to his left to push the ball behind.

It was Waghorn’s second penalty miss in three home games, and Derby had another great chance in the 63rd minute when Jason Knight was foiled by Johnstone, with Jack Marriott missing the rebound.

But Albion’s pressure told in the 84th minute when Max Lowe slid in on Matheus Pereira and Kenneth Zohore coolly converted his second penalty in four days.

Ward showed a red card to Bilic when Albion were denied a corner, and he admitted: “A lot of decisions I’m not happy about.

“I don’t want to talk a lot about them but they affect my job and everybody that is part of the West Brom family so I can give my comments in a nice way and a polite way.

“Nothing personal but I wasn’t happy with that and for me, there were too many of them so I reacted a few times, for the penalty and the corner that wasn’t given to us when it was an obvious deflection.

“Did I overreact? From their point of view I did but from my point of view I didn’t. I will have to work on it and control myself. I will have to calm myself down a bit but I will always voice my opinion but I will never be rude and never be personal.

“But I don’t understand why I can’t voice my opinion about something that is influencing our next week, our next game, my job, everybody’s job so in a nice polite way I have to.

“West Brom is expecting me to voice my opinion, who will voice an opinion if it’s not the manager?”

Derby manager Phillip Cocu was disappointed at the penalty his team conceded.

He said: “You know in football one moment in a game can change the result for you and I’m really disappointed about this because I told the lads at half-time be careful in the 18-yard box, no holding, no crazy tackles.

“In this situation, as a defender you have to stay on your feet. I haven’t seen it but I don’t care, you give the solution to the referee, if he touches or doesn’t touch the player and stays on his feet, what can he do, nothing. It’s hard, it’s tough on us but that’s why we don’t have the three points.

“It’s very disappointing, maybe the worse from all the games. We got an early lead, started well and if he scores the second penalty I think victory is ours and even in the second half we created three really good opportunities to score but we couldn’t get the second goal.”