Albion hope a calm response amid high controversy at West Brom pays off.
Head coach Graham Potter set the tone with a dignified reaction as Lewis Dunk had a goal from a quick free-kick wrongly disallowed.
Potter said: “The coach is a role model in that behaviour and it’s easier to follow the actions rather than the words.
“You have to behave in the way you feel is best for you.
“I’ve said before, if somebody acts in a different way, that’s not wrong, I’m just being me and our players have to be them as well and I don’t expect them to act like me.
“They will be different characters, different people, but the thing for them to know is they can get angry and that’s fine.
“It’s about getting angry in the right way and using it to help their performance.
“Getting angry and getting frustrated and it being detrimental to their performance is not helpful at all.
“It’s about the right emotional state, that’s the key thing. We’re human beings, we care, we get frustrated and annoyed.
“How we show it – you have to do it in your own way and everybody has to respect that.”
Albion staff were told maintaining "calm perspective" was crucial in an in-house message which went out at the start of the week.
MORE VAR CONTROVERSY AS ALBION STAY THREE CLEAR
That will also have been the message among the players.
Potter believes that positive response was in evidence at the Hawthorns.
He added: “When it doesn’t go our way, you can see the guys are frustrated and disappointed but I think it didn’t affect them negatively.
"They got on with it quite quickly, I think, finished the first half quite strongly, then carried on in the second half.
"The easy thing would be to blame everything on the referee and that one incident but there were other things in the game we need to address and be better at and we’ve chosen to focus on that because that’s the only thing we can control."
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