Despite Saido Berahino being the leading English goalscorer in the Premier League this season, there are still some who maintain he is not yet sufficiently robust to deal with the demands of senior international football.
Whether the England manager, Roy Hodgson, includes the young West Brom striker in his squad for the fixtures against Slovenia and Scotland remains to be seen, but the 21-year-old demonstrated a decent level of resilience after having the strength of his jaw tested by a tattooed eastern European defender on Saturday.
Feeling the full force of the Leicester stopper Marcin Wasilewski’s swinging elbow was the most painful moment of a testing game for Berahino. But having recovered and gestured his dismay that the referee, Stuart Attwell, had apparently failed to see the incident, the young centre-forward did not then go missing.
By the time he did finally leave the pitch with two minutes of normal time remaining he was, in the Albion manager, Alan Irvine’s, words, “running on quicksand”.
“It was a type of game where, because Leicester ask questions in behind your defence, you can sometimes get a little bit detached,” said Irvine after Berahino spent most of the game isolated up front.
He never stopped working to make himself available and it was a Berahino pullback that resulted in West Brom’s winner when Wes Morgan’s attempted headed clearance rebounded off team-mate Esteban Cambiasso and past the Leicester goalkeeper, Kasper Schmeichel.
“He’s had a different type of performance today but a good performance again,” said Irvine after Albion had made it 11 points from the last 18 available.
“The distances between [fellow striker] Stéphane Sessègnon and Saido were further than they normally would be because, with Cambiasso playing at the bottom of the [Leicester midfield] diamond, Sessègnon was sometimes attracted to him.
“That meant Saido’s movement had to be good and early on it wasn’t so good, he got caught offside on a number of occasions. But he started to understand what type of runs he had to make in order to get in behind their defence and he got better as the game went on.
“If he does get called up it’s how he handles that, and if he doesn’t it’s how he handles that as well. I keep saying to him ‘keep on playing well and things happen’.”
If Berahino’s England career might be about to begin, Joleon Lescott’s is almost certainly behind him. He won his last cap in March 2013 but the 32-year-old central defender has been outstanding in Albion’s recent run and was so again on Saturday.
“A top player, a great character in the dressing room and on the training ground, and a huge part of what we’ve done,” said Irvine who made Lescott his first signing after taking over at the Hawthorns last summer.
Leicester, while much improved in terms of work-rate and drive on their previous defeat at Swansea, created worryingly few chances and have now failed to score in four of their last five league matches, none of which have been won.
“It’s alright saying we’ve got to find goals but the thing that let us down was delivery into the box,” said Nigel Pearson. “You can pick fault at will if you want to but I know exactly where we’re at. We’re not going to go from a top Championship side to an ultra-competitive Premier League side in one hit.
“The margins of error are small. If we give ourselves as solid a base as we did we will cause teams problems. We’ll get better. I know we’re capable of being very competitive in this division and we will be, so what other people say doesn’t interest me too much.”
Man of the match Joleon Lescott (WBA)
