Alan Pardew was a happy man a his West Bromwich Albion side produced an impressive defensive performance at Anfield, holding Liverpool to a 0-0 draw on Wednesday evening.
The Baggies were on the back-foot for most of the game but stuck at their task resiliently, giving few chances away to their free-scoring opponents.
"Obviously you're coming up against a team with Coutinho in midfield and three fantastic strikers in front of him. We had trouble dealing with that movement and instinctive play they have," said manager Pardew.
"But we had a game-plan, we'd worked on the training ground and unlike Swansea - where I didn't think we delivered the game-plan - we did today and there were some great individual displays. Gibbs kept Salah very quiet."
Winless streak continues
Despite a positive result, West Brom remain winless since Pardew took the reigns from Tony Pulis in November, on a horror streak of just two wins from their last 26 games.
Until we get everyone fit and available, winning games is very tough for us," Pardew explained.
"It's a tough league. When the teams are so congested every point is gold dust for us.
"We didn't come here to open the game up, we're not in that place. I've come here before and been a little bit more ambitious in my set-up but not today, I knew where we were. "
"We needed to gain belief by being disciplined and I couldn't fault the players on that side, they game everything. It's a building block for us to open the game up more as we go along.
I think this West Brom side needs to be at full tilt in terms of bodies, it's nice that Brunty looked sharp when coming on. We've got Chadli and Barry looking good for the weekend so that puts our quality levels up."